Data is of great importance for every business today. Many businesses scrape relevant data from their websites every second, every minute. The combination of scraped data gives businesses power and advantages in many ways, such as developing marketing strategies, roadmaps, investment strategies, and more. While the need for data is so important, there are many options to obtain data from websites. The most preferred ones are to develop a web scraping application manually or to use a web scraper API.
Although both solutions are frequently used today, using the web scraper API helps businesses and especially artificial intelligence projects more in many ways. In this article, we will get to know the web scraper API and its benefits. Then we will make an integration with the help of both manual and scraper API and talk about the differences between them.
What is Web Scraper API?
Web scraping API is a web service used to pull and analyze target data from various websites automatically. With this API, businesses and developers can easily extract data from all worldwide websites.
This data provided by the web scraper API can be text, images, videos, prices, product information, news, and social media data. Businesses or developers can then analyze and report this data and make better decisions about future steps.
How to Extract Data from a Web Page Using Python?
In this section, we will develop two applications for codes that extract information from a sample website using the Python programming language. In the first web scraping code, we will access data using a Python library. On the other, we will integrate Zenscrape API, the most popular web scraping API today.
Scraping with the Python Library
The BeautifulSoup library in Python is one of the libraries used for web scraping from websites. It is quite simple to use. However, in this method, it is our responsibility to make settings such as proxy, security, and IP rotation. Therefore, it is a costly solution.
The sample code for extracting data from a website using BeautifulSoup is as follows.
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
target_web_page = requests.get('https://www.imdb.com/chart/top/')
bs = BeautifulSoup(target_web_page.content, 'html.parser')
target_link = bs.select("table tbody tr td.titleColumn a")
filtered_links = target_link[:5]
for data in filtered_links:
print(data.text) Scraping with the Web Scraper API
In this example, the web scraper API we will use to extract data from a website will be the Zenscrape API. Zenscrape API is the most popular web scraping API today. It presents the data of the target website in HTML format in seconds and takes a very short time to integrate. It also has a free subscription plan.
The integration of the Zenscrape API with the Python programming language is as follows.
import requests
url = "https://app.zenscrape.com/api/v1/get?apikey=YOUR_API_KEY&url=https://example.org/&premium=true&country=de&render=true"
payload={}
headers = {
'Cookie': 'customer_device_token=8f193203-79d7-400a-9ac3-00a38d743b35; ccsid=000-5069267-8857054; logged_out_browsing_page_count=1; srb_8=0_wl'
}
response = requests.request("GET", url, headers=headers, data=payload)
print(response.text)
What are the Main Advantages of the Zenscrape API?
Zenscrape API, which is the most used web scraping API by developers and businesses, has many advantages to applications.
The first of these is the proxy pool of this API. It provides an excellent web scraping experience with a proxy pool and millions of IP addresses in the proxy pool. Zenscrape API does not allow pauses in web scraping processes.
It also provides a location-based web scraping advantage. In this way, businesses and developers can easily scrape data opened only to people in a certain location.
Another advantage is the accuracy of the data it provides. That is, it provides the data that appears on the website. It uses JavaScript rendering technology for this. It eliminates the possibility of incorrect data.
Finally, the Zenscrape API integrates easily into any programming language. The unique documentation it provides includes sample codes for many programming languages.
Conclusion
In summary, we know that there are many options available to obtain data from websites. Although it seems easy nowadays to do web scraping using a Python library, this means both the cost of code development and many configurations yourself, such as proxy settings and IP rotation.
FAQs
Q: What is the Best for Web Data Extraction?
A: There are many options for extracting data from the internet. The most popular of these uses a web scraping tool. In this way, an uninterrupted web scraping bot can be created.
Q: Which Programming Languages Can Zenscrape API Integrate with?
A: Zenscrape API can be integrated into any programming language thanks to its powerful infrastructure. So, developers can start scraping from multiple pages quickly.
Q: What are the Benefits of Using the Zenscrape Web Scraper API?
A: Businesses and developers using the Zenscrape web scraper API can easily scrape data from many websites. Zenscrape API helps automate processes. In addition, it provides an excellent experience with its proxy pool and automatic IP address rotation features.
Q: Is There a Free Web Scraping API in the Marketplace?
A: Yes there is. Zenscrape API, Zenserp API, and Scraper API are some of the services that offer free web scraping.
Q: Is Data Scraping from Multiple Web Pages with the Zenscrape API?
A: Yes, the Zenscrape API can be set up to scrape data from different websites across multiple instances or bots. It can obtain data from all the links.
