Web scraping is a technique used to extract data from websites. It can be a useful tool for data mining, data analysis, and many other applications. However, manually scraping data from websites can be time-consuming and difficult, especially if you are not familiar with coding. This is where the web scraping API comes into play. After choosing the best web scraping API, you can get started.
There are many free web scraping tools available today and the number of them is increasing. While free web scraping tools make our work easier for us, we have the biggest responsibility. And that is choosing the best web scraping API.
How to Choose the Best Scraping API?
The web scraper API, which will be preferred to collect data from web pages, has some features that it should have.
First of all, it is very important for the web scraper API to manage proxies so that the data collection process can continue automatically. Managing proxies prevents the possibility of blocking and blacklisting that may occur during web scraping.
Web scraper API can scrape data from multiple pages. Therefore, the return format provided by this API is very important when integrating it into programming languages. It is expected to support many popular formats such as XML, JSON, and CSV formats to extract data.
What are the Free Web Scraping Tools?
There are many web scraping APIs available today. But most of these web scraping APIs fail to deliver the desired performance to their users.
Only some web scraping APIs in the market can scrape real time data from many internet sites, including google search results.
The web scraping APIs we have listed below are the most popular web scraping APIs available in the market.
- zenscrape API
- Zenserp API
- Scraper API
- ScrapingBee API
What is the Best Web Scraper API: zenscrape API
The zenscrape API provides a REST API for data extraction from any web page. It serves more than 10,000 customers at the same time.
Extracting data is a process. The zenscrape API masters all the intricacies of this process. It has proxy pools with millions of IP addresses. In this way, it does not allow any pause in web scraping. It is an uninterrupted scraping bot.
Users can access data without any additional action. Zencrape API automatically provides IP rotation and high concurrency.
The zenscrape API does JavaScript rendering. In this way, it works very fast compared to its competitors. Thanks to its flexible structure, it easily integrates into almost any programming language such as Python, JavaScript, Go, and Java.
What are the Subscription Plans of the zenscrapre API
The zenscrape API offers a total of six flexible subscription plans, including the free plan. The free version provides up to 1,000 requests per month. It provides plans for up to 6 million requests per month.
How to extract data using zenscrape API with Python
The zenscrape API provides a simple API that integrates easily and quickly into almost all programming languages. In this section, we will integrate the zenscrape API into Python step by step.
Get an API key
We need an API key to scrape data from an internet site using the zenscrape API. First, we will choose a subscription plan and then we will sign up and get the API key.
Code
After obtaining the API key, we will now move on to the code part. We will develop the application from which we will extract data with Python language.
Let’s create a Python file named ‘index’ on your computer desktop. Then paste the code below into this file.
import requests
headers = {
"apikey": "YOUR_API_KEY"
}
params = (
("url","https://example.com/"),
);
response = requests.get('https://app.zenscrape.com/api/v1/get', headers=headers, params=params);
print(response.text)The ‘url’ field is where we specify our target URL. Now let’s paste the API key we obtained after registration in the ‘apikey’ field.
Our scraping code is ready to be run and tested.
Run
Then, let’s open a terminal at the location of our ‘index’ file to start our Python application in one go.
We start the application by running the following command.
python index.pyTest
Finally, after the application is running, we need to look at the console screen of the application. We see the following output on the console screen of the application.
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Example Domain</title>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
<style type="text/css">
body {
background-color: #f0f0f2;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
}
div {
width: 600px;
margin: 5em auto;
padding: 2em;
background-color: #fdfdff;
border-radius: 0.5em;
box-shadow: 2px 3px 7px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.02);
}
a:link, a:visited {
color: #38488f;
text-decoration: none;
}
@media (max-width: 700px) {
div {
margin: 0 auto;
width: auto;
}
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<h1>Example Domain</h1>
<p>This domain is for use in illustrative examples in documents. You may use this
domain in literature without prior coordination or asking for permission.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.iana.org/domains/example">More information...</a></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>What are the use cases of using zenscrape API
There are many domains and projects that use web scraping APIs. The most popular of them are as follows.
Price comparison
Web scraping can be used to gather pricing information from multiple e-commerce websites, allowing businesses to compare prices and make data-driven decisions on pricing strategy.
Market research
Web scraping can be used to gather data on consumer behavior, market trends, and competitor activity.
Content aggregation
Web scraping can be used to gather news articles, blog posts, and other content from multiple websites, allowing businesses to aggregate and analyze the data.
Lead generation
Web scraping can be used to gather contact information from websites, allowing businesses to generate leads for their sales teams.
Social media monitoring
Web scraping can be used to gather data from social media platforms, allowing businesses to monitor mentions of their brand, track sentiment, and analyze competitors.
Job Posting
Web scraping can be used to gather job postings from various job portals, allowing businesses to analyze job market trends and get insights into the skills that are in demand.
Conclusion
In conclusion, web scraping is a powerful tool that can provide businesses with valuable insights and data to make data-driven decisions. The zenscrape API is a user-friendly and reliable web scraping solution that can help businesses automate their data collection processes and save time and resources. By using the zenscrape API, businesses can gather data on pricing, consumer behavior, market trends, competitor activity, and much more. With the power of zenscrape API, businesses can gain a competitive edge and make informed decisions to drive their business forward. If you are interested in exploring the capabilities of the zenscrape API and how it can benefit your business, we invite you to visit our website.
Sign up and discover privileges with a free trial today.
FAQs
What is a web scraping API?
A web scraping API is a tool that allows developers to easily extract data from websites without the need for manual scraping. These APIs typically provide a simple interface for making requests and receiving data in a structured format.
How do web scraping APIs work?
Web scraping APIs work by making requests to a website’s servers and returning the data in a structured format, such as JSON or CSV. These APIs typically use a simple interface, such as an API key, to authenticate requests and ensure that data is only accessed by authorized users.
What are the benefits of using a web scraping API?
Web scraping APIs can save time and resources by automating the data collection process. Additionally, these APIs provide a more structured and consistent data output, which can be useful for data analysis and machine learning applications.
How can I access a web scraping API?
To access a web scraping API, you will typically need to sign up for an account and obtain an API key. This key is used to authenticate requests and ensure that data is only accessed by authorized users.
