Enhancing Web Scraping: Using Proxies With Scrapy

Web scraping is a great way to get data from websites, but it’s not always easy. Many websites discourage it and try to stop it by using anti-bot measures such as geo-blocking, rate limiting, and IP banning. How can you avoid these problems and scrape data successfully?

The answer is proxies. They are servers that act as middlemen between you and the website.

In this article, we will show you how to use proxies with Scrapy, a powerful and popular web scraping framework for Python.

IMAGE: UNSPLASH

What Is A Proxy?

In simple terms, a proxy acts as an intermediary between your computer and the websites you visit. When you access a website directly, it can identify your computer’s unique IP address.

However, when you use a proxy, the website only sees the IP address of the proxy server, shielding your true identity.

Types Of Proxies

Proxies are intermediary servers that route your requests through different IP addresses (rotation of IP addresses). There are two types to highlight: datacenter and residential.

Datacenter Proxies

Datacenter proxies are IP addresses provided by companies other than internet service providers (ISPs). These proxies are provided by third-party companies such as web hosting companies and are hosted in data centers across the globe. They offer high speed and efficiency for handling a large number of requests quickly.

These proxies are cost-effective and commonly used for tasks such as price comparison, search engine scraping, and accessing publicly available data. However, their potential to be easily detectable by websites make them more prone to blocking.

Residential Proxies

Residential proxies use IP addresses from real residential devices, providing a more authentic browsing and web scraping experience. They offer higher anonymity levels and are less likely to trigger anti-scraping measures. Residential proxies are more reliable and stable, with a lower risk of being blacklisted by websites.

They are common for social media scraping, market research, and scraping from websites with strict anti-scraping measures.

How Proxies Work With Scrapy

Scrapy has built-in support for proxies, allowing you to configure your spider to utilize them effortlessly. By making a few adjustments to the settings, you can instruct Scrapy to route your requests through proxies, effectively concealing your identity and spreading your scraping tasks across various IP addresses.

There are two ways to set up proxies with scrapy.

Passing proxy credentials as a meta parameter: This is the quickest way to set up proxies with Scrapy. To do this, you need to know the IP address and port of the proxy server. You can then pass this information as a meta parameter in the requests of your web scraper.
Creating a custom middleware: This is a more advanced way to set up proxies with Scrapy. Creating custom middleware gives you more control over how Scrapy uses proxies.

Choosing The Right Ones

When selecting proxies for your project, there are a few factors to consider. Firstly, opt for those from reliable providers to get high-quality ones and therefore be less likely to be blacklisted by websites or experience frequent downtime.

Additionally, take into account the pricing and scalability of proxy services. Some providers, like ZenRows, offer premium proxy services with flexible plans that allow you to scale your scraping efforts as your project expands.

Benefits Of Using Them With Scrapy

Proxies provide a shield of anonymity and help you avoid IP blocks. Some websites restrict the number of requests allowed from a single IP address to prevent abuse.

By utilizing proxies, you can distribute your requests across multiple IP addresses, making it challenging for websites to track and block your activities.

Also, proxies supercharge web scraping speed and efficiency. By employing a technique called proxy rotation, you can send multiple requests concurrently and gather data from multiple sources simultaneously. This significantly increases your likelihood of being able to get the data you want.

Lastly, proxies empower you to access geographically restricted content. Some websites limit access based on geographical locations or specific countries. However, by employing proxies located in different geographical regions, you can bypass these restrictions and unlock content that would otherwise remain out of reach.

Conclusion

Using proxies with Scrapy opens up a world of possibilities. By leveraging them, you can scrape the web anonymously and overcome geographical restrictions.