ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator: Web Scraping Integration Guide

Since 2021, ScrapeOps has been a one stop shop for all of your proxy related needs. We offer two main products, the Proxy Aggregator and the Residential & Mobile Proxy Aggregator. Both of these services maintain a pool of proxies. When you make a request to either of them, they find the best proxy to suit your parameters. Then, they route your request through that proxy to hide your real IP address and gain access to your target site. Once they've accessed the site, they send the response back to you so you can extract its data.

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Proxy Manager

Scraper Monitoring

Job Scheduling

TLDR: Web Scraping With Proxy Aggregator?

To get started with ScrapeOps, all you need is an API key. Once you've got that, either save it to a config file, or hardcode it into your scraper (not recommended). Then, simply make your requests to our API. In the code below, get_scrapeops_url() is used to route our requests through the ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator.

import requestsimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
url = "https://httpbin.org/ip"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))
print(response.text)

The snippet above gets us hooked into the ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator very quickly. If you want to customize your proxy, add parameters to the payload. To view the params for advanced functionality such as JavaScript rendering and country geotargeting, check out the docs here

What Is The ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator?

Our Proxy Aggregator uses a giant pool of proxies from providers all over the world. This allows us to have some of the most stable and efficient proxy connections around. During a larger scrape, we take your requests and route them all through different IP addresses. This make your scraper look like a bunch of separate normal users instead of a bot. The ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator manages proxy connections so you don't have to.

How Does Proxy Aggregator Work?

As mentioned previously, Proxy Aggregator maintains a pool of proxies and always finds the best one so you don't have to. We have dozens of proxy providers here at ScrapeOps including datacenter, residential, and mobile proxies. When you make a request through Proxy Aggregator, we first attempt your request with a datacenter proxy. If the initial request fails, we retry it using a Premium (residential or mobile) Proxy. Once we've retrieved your target site, we send the page back to you. The overall process looks like this:

You send your target url and your API key to ScrapeOps.
Our Proxy Aggregator receives the request and attempts to access the site.
If the request fails, we retry it using a Premium Proxy.
Once we have a access to the target site, we send the page back to you.

The example below is from our TLDR section, but you can see what makes up a basic request to the API.

import requestsimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
url = "https://httpbin.org/ip"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))
print(response.text)

There are only a couple required components when making a request to the ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator.

Component	Description
API Key	API key tied to your account for authentication purposes.
url	The target domain that you'd like to scrape.

Response Format

By default, our responses come in as whatever the target site returns.

If the site returns HTML, we send you an HTML page.
If the site returns JSON, we forward that JSON back to you.

We also have the option to use the json_response parameter. When we set json_response to true, we can receive a bunch of other information about the response to our request.

import requestsimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        "json_response": True        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
url = "https://quotes.toscrape.com"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))
print(json.dumps(response.json(), indent=4))

Proxy Aggregator Pricing

Aside from our free trial, we offer 8 separate paid plans that can suit users of all kinds. Whether you're just looking to dabble and mess around with proxies, or you're running a Commercial/Enterprise data miner, we have a plan that will suit your needs. Our lowest tier plan comes in at $9 per month with 25,000 API credits. Our highest tier costs $249 monthly and comes packed with 3,000,000 API credits. Even at our lowest tier, you're only paying $0.00036 for a standard request through the API.

API Credits	Cost Per Normal Reqest	Monthly Price
25,000	$0.00036	$9
50,000	$0.0003	$15
100,000	$0.00019	$19
250,000	$0.000116	$29
500,000	$0.000108	$54
1,000,000	$0.000099	$99
2,000,000	$0.0000995	$199
3,000,000	$0.000083	$249

With ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator, you only pay for successful requests. If we can't get the site, you don't pay.

Response Status Codes

Status codes are an integral part of all web development. Most people know that a 200 means success. However, if you're receiving anything other than a 200, something isn't right. To fix your issue, first you need to diagnose it. That's where status codes come in. Status codes let us know what went wrong with the request. If you understand the status code, you'll be able to address the problem.

Status Code	Type	Description
200	Success	Everything is working!
400	Bad Request	You need to double check your parameters.
401	Unauthorized	You're out of credits. Buy more or shut off your scraper.
403	Unauthorized	Missing or invalid API key.
404	Not Found	Double check your url, the site wasn't found.
429	Too Many Requests	You've exceeded your concurrency limit.
500	Internal Server Error	We're having an internal issue and could get your response.

Setting Up The ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator

Our signup is pretty simple. Just enter some basic information and complete a CAPTCHA. Then you'll be able to access your 1,000 free API credits. ScrapeOps Signup

Our dashboard has everything you need to get started. Documentation, our request builder, and your usage stats are all just a single click away. ScrapeOps Dashboard

With ScrapeOps, we have several options available for connecting. You can use our API endpoints to fine tune your scraper with ease. You can use proxy port integration if you just want to set your connection and forget it. We have an SDK available as well for those of you who are new to code and don't want to focus on the lower level HTTP stuff.

REST API: Our REST API is a perfect way to control the little details of your scrape. If you're familiar with API integrations, this is the way you'll want to go.
Port Integration: If you'd like to just setup a basic proxy and forget it, this option is for you. With proxy port integration, we create a dict of proxies and then just pass it into requests as a keyword. Everything else remains the same.
SDK: Our SDK is a great way to get started if you're not used to making HTTP requests. With the SDK, you can ignore much of the lower level parameters we deal with when connecting through the REST API.

If you click the Proxy Aggregator tab, you'll see a number of other tabs as well. One of these options is Request Builder. You can use this to build custom requests easily.

API Endpoint Integration

In our previous examples, we've already performed endpoint integration. To better understand this, take a look again at our code from the last example. you can see it again in the snippet below. Pay close attention to our proxy_url variable inside of get_scrapeops_url().

import requestsimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        "json_response": True        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
url = "https://quotes.toscrape.com"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))
print(json.dumps(response.json(), indent=4))

The first portion of our proxy_url is what we really should pay attention to here: https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?. Our base domain is https://proxy.scrapeops.io. The endpoint our scraper talks to is /v1/. Anytime we talk to the ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator API, we're talking to this endpoint. You can read more about endpoint integration here.

Proxy Port Integration

Alot of folks swear by proxy port integration. With proxy port integration, we setup an initial proxy connection and forget about it. Use this option if you're not really concerned about customization and you just want to get on with coding. To avoid SSL errors, you need to set verify to False.

import requestsimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]

import requests
proxies = {  "http": f"http://scrapeops:{API_KEY}@proxy.scrapeops.io:5353"}response = requests.get('https://httpbin.org/ip', proxies=proxies, verify=False)print(response.text)

You can read more on this here

SDK Integration

You can also use Proxy Aggregator with our SDK. With the SDK, you don't have to worry about the lower level HTTP stuff and you can just continue doing what you need to do. This option is most recommended for beginners. You can install the SDK with the following command.

pip install scrapeops-python-requests

You can view some example usage below.

from scrapeops_python_requests.scrapeops_requests import ScrapeOpsRequests

## Initialize the ScrapeOps Loggerscrapeops_logger = ScrapeOpsRequests(    scrapeops_api_key='API_KEY_HERE',     spider_name='QuotesSpider',    job_name='Job1',    )

## Initialize the ScrapeOps Python Requests Wrapperrequests = scrapeops_logger.RequestsWrapper() 
urls = [        'http://quotes.toscrape.com/page/1/',        'http://quotes.toscrape.com/page/2/',        'http://quotes.toscrape.com/page/3/',        'http://quotes.toscrape.com/page/4/',        'http://quotes.toscrape.com/page/5/',        ]

for url in urls:    response = requests.get(url)
    item = {'test': 'hello'}
    ## Log Scraped Item    scrapeops_logger.item_scraped(        response=response,        item=item    )

You can view more about our SDK here.

Managing Concurrency

On our lower tier plans, you only get 1 concurrent thread at a time. However, starting at the $29 plan, you get 5 threads. Concurrency is an amazing feature that can save loads of time on your scrape. The example we have below uses ThreadPoolExecutor to scrape multiple pages concurrently.

import requestsfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoupimport concurrent.futuresimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""NUM_THREADS = 3
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
list_of_urls = [            'http://quotes.toscrape.com/page/1/',            'http://quotes.toscrape.com/page/2/',            'http://quotes.toscrape.com/page/3/',            ]
output_data_list = []
def scrape_page(url):    try:        response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))        if response.status_code == 200:            soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser")            title = soup.find('h1').text                        ## add scraped data to "output_data_list" list            output_data_list.append({                'title': title,            })                except Exception as e:        print('Error', e)                with concurrent.futures.ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=NUM_THREADS) as executor:    executor.map(scrape_page, list_of_urls)    print(output_data_list)

ThreadPoolExecutor opens up a pool of threads with the max_workers argument. executor.map() then takes the following arguments:

scrape_page: the function we wish to call on all open threads.
list_of_urls: a list arguments to be passed into the function above.

Advanced Functionality

One of the primary reasons to use ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator: advanced features at reasonable prices. We have a ton of advanced features you can use to customize your scrape. Whether you're looking to use country geotargeting, or render dynamic content on the page, we've got you covered. NOTE: some features will cost extra to perform.

Parameter	API Credits	Description
`optimize_request`	None	Optimize the request.
`max_request_cost`	None	Set a max cost for a request.
`bypass`	10 - 85	Bypass a certain type of anti-bot.
`auto_extract`	1 - 25	Auto extract content from the target site.
`render_js`	10	Open a browser and render JavaScript content.
`wait`	10	Wait [X] milliseconds for content to render.
`wait_for`	10	Wait for a specific element to appear onscreen.
`scroll`	10	Scroll down the page by [X] pixels
`screenshot`	10	Take a screenshot with the headless browser.
`js_scenario`	10	Execute a set of JS actions (scroll, click etc.)
`premium`	1.5	Use a premium proxy pool.
`residential`	10 - 50	Use a residential IP address.
`mobile`	10 - 50	Use a mobile IP address.
`country`	None	Use an IP in a specific country
`keep_headers`	None	Forward your headers to the target site.
`device_type`	None	Mobile or desktop related user agents.
`session_number`	None	Create a sticky session witha `session_number`.
`follow_redirects`	None	Tell the API not to follow redirects.

You can look at our full documentation on advanced functionality here.

Javascript Rendering

render_js tells ScrapeOps that we want to render JavaScript. If we use the wait or wait_for parameters, Proxy Aggregator will also automatically open a browser and allow dynamic content to render on the page. In the code below, we use the wait parameter so the browser can interact with the WhatIsMyBrowser. Once the content has been rendered, ScrapeOps sends our response back so we can extract our data.

import requestsfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoupimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        "wait": 2000        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
url = "https://www.whatismybrowser.com/"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser")js_enabled = soup.select_one("span[class='detection-message no-javascript']").textprint(js_enabled)

"wait": 2000 tells Proxy Aggregator to wait 2 seconds for our dynamic content to render.
soup.select_one("span[class='detection-message no-javascript']").text scrapes the page to find out whether or not JavaScript is enabled.

If you run this code, you get the following output. Render JS

The docs for wait are available here.

Controlling The Browser

Controlling the browser is sometimes a necessity. You've already seen us control the browser with wait. We can also use scroll to scroll downward before returning the response. In the example below, we replace our wait call with a call to scroll. As the browser scrolls downward, the content loads and we get a proper response back.

import requestsfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoupimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode, quote
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        "scroll": 5000        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
url = "https://www.whatismybrowser.com/"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser")js_enabled = soup.select_one("span[class='detection-message no-javascript']").textprint(js_enabled)

We can use the following methods to control the browser:

wait/wait_for: Tells the browser to wait a certain amount of time.
scroll: Tells the browser to scroll down [X] amount of pixels.
js_scenario: Tells the browser to execute a set of JavaScript commands.

Here is our full documentation on scrolling the page.

Country Geotargeting

Geotargeting is imperative when you're scraping. To select a country for geotargeting with Proxy Aggregator, we use the country parameter. This allows us to select a country and our request will be routed through a proxy inside of that country. When our request is made, our location will show up in that country instead of at our local machine.

import requestsfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoupimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        "country": "br"        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
url = "https://httpbin.org/ip"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))print("proxy location:", response.text)

Here is the output. ScrapeOps Geolocation

We selected a geolocation of "br" (Brazil), and our IP address is showing up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Geolocation Verification

Geotargeting is very important when scraping the web. Our full docs on geotargeting are available here. Here are some of the country codes you can use with Scrapfly.

Country	Code
Brazil	br
Canada	ca
China	cn
India	in
Italy	it
Japan	jp
France	fr
Germany	de
Russia	ru
Spain	es
United States	us
United Kingdom	uk

Residential Proxies

Residential proxies are another important staple in web scraping. Many sites will block your request if it's coming from a datacenter IP. To get around datacenter blocks, you can enable residential. In the code below, we use "residential": True to tell Proxy Aggregator that we want a residential IP address.

import requestsfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoupimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        "residential": True        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
url = "https://httpbin.org/ip"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))print("proxy location:", response.text)

Custom Headers

With ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator, custom headers are really easy to setup. We just need to use keep_headers. When we set keep_headers to True, ScrapeOps will automatically forward our custom headers to the target url. How easy is that?

import requestsfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoupimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        "keep_headers": True        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url

headers = {    "My Custom Header": "My Custom Value"}
url = "https://httpbin.org/ip"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url), headers=headers)
content = response.textprint("proxy location:", content)

Our custom header documentation is available here.

Static Proxies

Static Proxies are one of web scraping's most important niches. They're not for everyone, but static proxies give you the power to reuse a session. To do this with ScrapeOps, we use the session_number argument. Give your session a number, and ScrapeOps will reuse the IP address for any requests using that session_number. Here is the code to set a session.

import requestsfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoupimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        "session_number": 1        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url

headers = {    "My Custom Header": "My Custom Value"}
url = "https://httpbin.org/ip"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url), headers=headers)
content = response.textprint("proxy location:", content)

Our full docs on session_number can be viewed here.

Screenshot Functionality

Screenshots are super important when scraping the web. Whether you want to verify your extracted data or you need to debug a crashed scraper, screenshots can be a life saver. To take screenshots with Proxy Aggregator, we use the Take a look at the example below. Our screenshot comes as a Base64 encoded binary.

import requestsfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoupfrom base64 import b64decodeimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        "screenshot": True,        "render_js":  True,        "json_response": True        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
url = "https://httpbin.org/ip"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))
encoded_binary = response.json()["screenshot"]decoded_binary = b64decode(encoded_binary)
with open("screenshot.png", "wb") as file:    file.write(decoded_binary)

The screenshot comes as a Base64 encoded binary.
To use our screenshot, we need to decode it into a .png binary.
Once decoded, we can write the binary like a regular file. Make sure you open the file in "wb" (write binary) mode!

Here is the screenshot we took. PNG Binary

The documentation for screenshots is available here.

Auto Parsing

Our auto parsing feature is currently in beta. At the time of this writing, we only have support for Google and Amazon. As time goes on, we'll continue to add to this list. Take a look at the code below to see how to use the auto_extract parameter. In this case, we're using it to extract Amazon product information and then send the extracted data back to us.

import requestsfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoupfrom base64 import b64decodeimport jsonfrom urllib.parse import urlencode
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json") as file:    config = json.load(file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        "auto_extract": "amazon"        }            proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url
url = "https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BNQ9GS1"
response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))

Our documentation on automatic extraction can be found here.

Case Study: Using Proxy Aggregator on IMDb Top 250 Movies

Time to put the ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator to the test. In this section, we'll scrape a real world site (IMDB) using the ScrapeOps Proxy aggregator. Take a look at the function below. This is just our standard get_scrapeops_url() function that we've been using throughout this whole tutorial.

def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        }    proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url

Here is the full code for scraping IMDB with ScrapeOps.

import osimport requestsfrom bs4 import BeautifulSoupimport jsonimport csvimport loggingfrom  urllib.parse import urlencode
## Logginglogging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
API_KEY = ""
with open("config.json", "r") as config_file:    config = json.load(config_file)    API_KEY = config["scrapeops_api_key"]
def get_scrapeops_url(url):    payload = {        "api_key": API_KEY,        "url": url,        }    proxy_url = "https://proxy.scrapeops.io/v1/?" + urlencode(payload)    return proxy_url


def scrape_movies(url, location="us", retries=3):    success = False    tries = 0
    while not success and tries <= retries:        response = requests.get(get_scrapeops_url(url))
        try:            if response.status_code != 200:                raise Exception(f"Failed response from server, status code: {response.status_code}")
            soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser")            json_tag = soup.select_one("script[type='application/ld+json']")            json_data = json.loads(json_tag.text)["itemListElement"]
            movie_list_length = 0
            movie_list = []
            for item in json_data:                movie_list.append(item["item"])            movie_list_length+=len(json_data)
            print(f"Movie list length: {len(json_data)}")            with open("scrapeops-top-250.json", "w") as file:                json.dump(movie_list, file, indent=4)                success = True        except Exception as e:            logger.error(f"Failed to process page: {e}, retries left: {retries-tries}")            tries+=1
    if not success:        raise Exception(f"Failed to scrape page, MAX RETRIES {retries} EXCEEDED!!!")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    MAX_RETRIES = 3
    logger.info("Starting IMDB scrape")
    url = "https://www.imdb.com/chart/top/"
    scrape_movies(url, retries=MAX_RETRIES)
    logger.info("Scrape complete")

The full scrape took 4.604 seconds using the ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator. This is a pretty decent request and response time. It's not uncommon for some requests to take 7 seconds or more. The ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator is more than adequate for scraping IMDB. ScrapeOps Results

Troubleshooting

Issue #1: Request Timeouts

Timeouts are difficult to deal with when you don't know what you're doing. To handle timeouts properly, we need to set a timeout with requests. To set this timeout, we use the timeout keyword argument. If you look at the code below, our timeout is set to 5 seconds.

import requests
# 5 second timeoutresponse = requests.get("https://httpbin.org/get", timeout=5)

Issue #2: Handling CAPTCHAs

CAPTCHAs are no fun at all. If you're receiving a CAPTCHA, something is likely failing with your scraper. ScrapeOps is built to specifically avoid CAPTCHAs and bypass anti-bots. First, retry your request. If you are consistently receiving CAPTCHAs, look into using our bypass argument. You can view the docs for bypass here. 2Captcha is also another way to get your CAPTCHAs solved. We a very in-depth article about handling CAPTCHAs here.

Issue #3: Invalid Response Data

Invalid response data is a really common issue in all areas of web development. To take care of errors like this, you need to know the status code that was sent. We've got a cheat sheet here. Most importantly, you need to try and understand your status code and solve the problem accordingly.

The Legal & Ethical Implications of Web Scraping

Legal Considerations

Here at ScrapeOps, we only like to scrape public data. This is a very important point if you want to scrape the web legally. Public data is public information (much like a billboard). If you scrape private data (data gated behind a login), this falls under a completely separate set of IP (intellectual property) and privacy laws. If you choose to scrape private data, there are many potential consequences including:

Terms of Service Violations: When you agree to terms, they are legally binding agreements. If you violate these Terms, you can be held liable and even face civil suits.
Computer Fraud and Other Hacking Charges: Depending on how you access your data and the rules governing that data, you can even face prison time. Violations of this sort don't always come with a financial penalty, some people are required to actually go to prison and serve hard time.
Other Legal Consequences: Depending on what you do with said data, you can face all sorts of issues that come from IP (intellectual property) and privacy laws that vary based on jurisdiction. Be cautious, depending on your location and the location of the offense, many of these charges can also come with prison time.

Ethical Consequences

When you agree to a site's Terms, it is usually treated as a legally binding contract. Websites have Terms and Conditions because they want you to follow the rules when you're using their product. Along with site Terms, we also should take into consideration the robots.txt of the target site.

Terms Violations: When you violate a legally binding contract, you are subject to any consequences defined in that contract. This includes suspension and even a permanent ban. Depending on the terms, the target site might even be able to sue you.
robots.txt Violations: Violating a sites robots policies is not technically illegal. However, there are many other things that can happen. Examples of this include reputational damage to you and your company. No company wants to be the next headline related to unethical practices.

Conclusion

You now know (in detail) how to go from signup to advanced user with the ScrapeOps Proxy Aggregator. You've learned a little bit about everything from your first request all the way to auto extraction. Take this new knowledge of proxy integration and go build something! Integrate your next scraper with a stable and efficient proxy connection.

More Web Scraping Guides

At ScrapeOps, our learning resources are seemingly endless. We wrote the playbook on web scraping in Python because we just love web scraping that much. You can view it here. To view more of our proxy integration guides, take a look at the articles below.