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Geelark Integration

How to Integrate ScrapeOps Residential Proxies with Geelark

Geelark is a really cool webapp that allows us to control phones remotely using our desktop. Once you download Geelark, you can create a virtual smartphone with all sorts of customizations and tweakable proxy settings.

Today, we're going to create a trial account with Geelark and integrate it with ScrapeOps Residential Proxies. Our Residential Proxies offer a stable connection with anonymity, geotargeting, and enhanced browser security.

Throughout this guide, we'll walk you through step by step so you can get started with Geelark and use proxied virtual phones of your own.

Introduction​

Geelark is an app that allows you to create virtual smartphones. The applications for this are pretty much endless. If you want to run multiple instances of the same app, Geelark's got you covered.

If you want to collect data based on geolocation, Geelark helps you accomplish this too. Geelark can help with automation, social media, marketing and so much more.

What Is a Proxy?

A proxy server acts as a go-between. Your browser communicates with the rest of the web using HTTP requests. When we access the web through a proxy, our HTTP requests go to a proxy server. Once the proxy server receives them, it routes them through different IP addresses.

When we combine Geelark with a proxy, it takes things to the next level. With proxy integration, all of your devices can be in different locations. Not just different locations, but locations of your choosing. If that wasn't reason enough, we support Sticky Sessions, so you can stay logged in over the course of a session.

Prerequisites​

To follow along with this tutorial, you'll need both a Geelark account and a ScrapeOps account. Geelark will provide you with virtual phones. ScrapeOps provides us with bandwidth and customization for these virtual phones.

Follow the steps below to get setup.

Geelark

To get started with Geelark, you need to create an account.

  1. Go to their registration page and enter your account details.
  2. When you enter your email address, they'll send you a verification code pretty much immediately. This makes the signup process a bit easier than with other services because your account is verified as soon as it's created.
  3. Once you're finished creating your account, you'll receive a free trial with 60 minutes of usage. These minutes expire as you use them. If you want, you could use 10 minutes today and 50 minutes tomorrow. Your trial is not going to expire in an hour.

Geelark Registration

ScrapeOps

If you have already created one, you'll need to create a ScrapeOps account. Go to our registration page. Once you're signed up, you immediately get a free trial for both our Proxy Aggregator and our Residential Proxy Aggregator. Fill in the details below, and you should be good to go!

ScrapeOps: Registration

Now that you've got an account, you gain access to 1,000 free API credits with our Proxy Aggregator and 500MB of free data with our Residential Proxy Aggregator.

You need to save your API key. You'll need this API key in order to sign in to the Residential Proxy.

Setting Up Geelark with Residential Proxies​

Now we're going to hook everything together. First, we'll download Geelark and get everything installed and set up. Once we're done with installation, we're going to integrate with our proxy and test it out. If everything works correctly, our virtual phone should appear in a different location than where we're at.

  1. First, head on over to Geelark's download page. Geelark is only available on Windows and Mac. Select the download specific to your OS.

Geelark: Downloads Page

  1. Now, it's time to begin our installation. We'll go with the simple One Click Installation.

Geelark: Begin Installation

  1. After Geelark has finished installing, enter the login details you used to create your new account.

Geelark App: Login

  1. Now, click on the Proxies tab. Enter your proxy information as you see in the image below.
  • Our URL is http://residential-proxy.scrapeops.io.
  • The port number is 8181.
  • In the Proxy username field, input scrapeops.
  • Then, inside the Proxy password box, enter your ScrapeOps API key.

Geelark: Proxy Setup

You can click Check proxy to perform a quick test on your proxy to see if it's working. As you can see in the image below, our location is showing up in Hungary.

Geelark: Proxy Test

  1. Next, it's time to create your first phone profile. Click the New Profile tab. You'll see a screen similar to what you see in the image below. Enter the details to create your phone.

Geelark: Create Phone Profile

  1. Once you're finished, you'll see your new profile listed in the Profiles section.

Geelark: Profiles

Testing the Integration​

Now, we'll turn on the phone and test out our integration. We'll use Browserscan to examine our phone's internet connection. Browserscan checks our IP address, location, time zone, and much more.

In the Profiles section, click Start. After clicking the start button, you should get a popup in the shape of a smartphone like you see in the image below. This is the loading screen as Geelark connects to your virtual phone.

Geelark: Phone Starting

Once your phone has finished booting up, you'll be at the home screen. It should look something like this.

Virtual Phone: Home Screen

Now, we can go to Browserscan and examine our proxy. As you can see, we're now located in The Philippines. Our time zone is now Asia/Manila. There are a number of other things you can examine about our proxied phone, but these are the main points to take note of.

Proxy Test

Configuring Geelark for Proxy Integration​

There are a few things we can do to configure our proxy connection. By simply editing our Proxy username, we can control our geolocation and we can also use a Static Proxy (Sticky Session).

In the next couple sections, we'll take a detailed look at how to perform these tweaks.

You can get started by selecting the Proxies tab.

Geelark: Select a Proxy

Next, click the three dots icon and select edit. Your proxy configuration settings will pop up. You can edit the configuration from here.

Geelark: Edit Proxy Settings

Geotargeting​

With the proxy configuration open, we'll edit our location by changing our Proxy username. Earlier, we set our username to scrapeops. This will always be our basic username, but we can tweak it by adding flags to the end of it. We can use the country flag to control our location.

In the image below, we set our country to us. Our full username is scrapeops.country=us. That's all that was required.

Add Country to Username

Here's another screenshot from Browserscan. As you can see in the results, we're showing up in the America/New York time zone. Our postal code is 02128 and our ISP is T-Mobile USA Inc. We've got a completely legit connection showing up in the country we chose.

Browserscan: Geotargeting Results

Using Static Proxies​

Sticky Sessions (Static Proxies) allow us to reuse an IP address. Have you ever been using an app only to be interrupted by a signin prompt saying, "Your location change. Please login again."

Without Sticky Sessions, our location would change every single time we do something... At a minimum, this would be really frustrating. If we're doing something difficult, it could even wreck whatever task we're trying to accomplish.

The concept here is very similar to the geotargeting we did in the example above. Instead of appending our username with the country flag, we're going to append our username with the sticky_session flag.

When we add the sticky_session flag, we need to assign a number to our session. It can be any number between 0 and 10000.

In the example below, we use sticky_session=7 to create a new Sticky Session. Our full username is scrapeops.sticky_session=7. Nothing else changes in our configuration.

Add Sticky Session

Now, we'll look at the first screenshot from Browserscan. The time is 11:04 and we're showing up in Bahrain. Our IP address is 37.131.44.188. We need to take note of these so we can compare them to a refresh a few minutes later.

Browserscan: First Screenshot

We actually turned the phone completely off and restarted it before taking this next screenshot. After a full reboot, reopening the phone and going to Browserscan again, our IP address is still 37.131.44.188. Our location is still Bahrain. The time is now 11:06. A couple minutes have passed and everything about our connection is still exactly the same.

Browserscan: Second Screenshot

Common Issues and Troubleshooting​

Here are some common issues you might run into with your proxy connection. Whether your phone isn't connecting, your location isn't right, or you're losing your Sticky Session, we'll show you how to take care of the issue.

No Proxy Connection​

Phone Stuck Connecting

If your phone isn't connecting at all, there's most likely something wrong with your credentials. Make sure your credentials are correct. Without any customization, your username should be scrapeops. Your password should be your ScrapeOps API key. Your port number should be 8181. You should double check your Proxy server as well. The server should be residential-proxy.scrapeops.io.

If all of these are correct, log into ScrapeOps in your browser and go to the dashboard. Take a look at your Credits used and your Limit.

If you've exceeded your usage limit, you'll need to upgrade your plan.

If you still have Credits/Bandwidth left and the connection isn't working, contact support by clicking the chat icon in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Send us an email and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

ScrapeOps Help Chat

Incorrect Location​

This one is more common than you would think. If your device is showing up in the wrong location, go back to your proxy settings and take a look at your country flag. Double check your country code. Wikipedia curates a decent list of all the available global ones. Quite often, we give access to more countries than our documentation says.

If your country is still not correct, choose one of the countries from the list in our documentation here. We always have support for these countries listed in our documentation.

Sticky Session Expiring​

There is no fool proof way to troubleshoot this one. Sticky Session last a maximum of 10 minutes. I know, this is kind of a short time window,

To handle the session expiration, you'll need to perform all of your actions within the session time limit. We rotate IPs after 10 minutes to keep our users and proxies safe and healthy.

Conclusion​

There you have it! You now have the power to harness ScrapeOps Residential Proxies with Geelark's virtual smartphones. This combination is incredibly powerful.

You can engage in airdrop farming, ad farming, social media, marketing and much more from anywhere you want in the world! Our Residential Proxies give you a stable, anonymous connection and Geelark gives you the power to start up a virtual new phone with custom settings.

Take these new skills and do something with them! If you'd like to know more about our Residential Proxies, you can read our docs here. We're currently in beta, but it's a really strong product, as you noticed in this article.

If you'd like to know more about Geelark's virtual phones, you can take a look at their blog here as well. They've got all sorts of interesting stuff to read about this emerging market. Take the plunge!

More Python Web Scraping Guides​

At ScrapeOps, we're packed to the gills with learning resources. We've got a general Web Scraping Playbook.

If you're interested in learning Python, check out our Python Playbook or our Selenium Playbook.