Quickscraper Tool

While many scrapers focus on extracting data from HTML pages, an alternative approach is to directly scrape data from a website's API endpoints. Here is a guide to API scraping and how it differs from traditional web scraping. What is an API? API stands for Application Programming Interface. APIs allow applications to communicate with each other and exchange data directly without needing user interfaces like web pages. For example, Twitter's API lets developers build apps that can post tweets, download user profiles and more. Why Scrape APIs? Here are some benefits of scraping data from APIs instead of HTML pages: Structured data - APIs return data in structured formats like JSON or XML which are far easier to parse and extract information from compared to messy HTML. Greater efficiency - APIs provide direct access to raw data. There is no need to mimic user interactions or load interface pages. Stable - APIs change far less frequently than HTML UIs. Once you can scrape an A...

Web scraping is a technique to automatically collect data from websites. However, many sites try to prevent scraping by employing various bot detection and blocking mechanisms. Some common ones are CAPTCHAs, IP blocking, hidden honeypots and more. As a scraper, you need robust strategies to overcome these blocks and continue unfettered data collection. This post explores the popular anti-scraping measures sites use and how to address them. Why Sites Block Scrapers Websites block automated scrapers for a few key reasons: Overload servers - Excessive scraping can overload servers and cost money. Sites want to throttle usage. Data misuse - Scraped data could be used by competitors or in unethical ways. Sites want control over data usage. Security - Scrapers may try to hack in or find exploits. Blocking bots improves security. Business reasons - Many sites monetize API access to data or want users to see ads on pages. Scraping circumvents these models. Understanding the motivation hel...