Web Scraping Overview

Learn about the web scraping capabilities and how to extract data from websites effectively.

Features

Our web scraping nodes provide:

  • Automated data extraction
  • Dynamic content handling
  • Rate limiting and politeness
  • Proxy support
  • Data parsing and cleaning

Available Nodes

Extract Content

  • Basic HTML extraction
  • Dynamic JavaScript content
  • Form submission
  • Authentication handling

Bulk Operations

  • Multiple URL processing
  • Concurrent scraping
  • Queue management
  • Error handling

Data Processing

  • Content parsing
  • Data cleaning
  • Format conversion
  • Validation

Best Practices

  1. Respect robots.txt
  2. Implement rate limiting
  3. Handle errors gracefully
  4. Use appropriate headers
  5. Cache when possible

Example Usage

Basic Scraping

{
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "selectors": {
    "title": "h1",
    "content": ".main-content",
    "links": "a[href]"
  }
}

Advanced Configuration

{
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "config": {
    "wait_for": ".dynamic-content",
    "timeout": 5000,
    "proxy": {
      "enabled": true,
      "rotation": true
    },
    "headers": {
      "User-Agent": "Custom Bot 1.0",
      "Accept-Language": "en-US"
    }
  }
}

Rate Limiting

Configure scraping speeds:

{
  "rate_limit": {
    "requests_per_second": 2,
    "concurrent_requests": 5,
    "delay_between_requests": 500
  }
}

Error Handling

Common scenarios:

  • Network timeouts
  • Rate limiting
  • Blocked requests
  • Invalid selectors
  • Parse errors

Data Validation

Validate extracted data:

{
  "validation": {
    "required_fields": ["title", "price"],
    "format": {
      "price": "number",
      "date": "ISO8601"
    },
    "constraints": {
      "title": {
        "min_length": 5,
        "max_length": 200
      }
    }
  }
}

Security Considerations

  1. Handle sensitive data appropriately
  2. Respect website terms of service
  3. Implement proper authentication
  4. Use secure connections
  5. Monitor for blocking/detection