Web scraping is a method for extracting data from websites. Through this tutorial, review Oxylabs Web Scraper APIs:
We live in a world where data is at the left, right, and center of everything we do. The ease with which we can find, gather and use this data determines our ability to build analysis systems, create business models, and gain intelligence on any subject. Common uses for collected data are SEO, Price monitoring, AI, Machine learning, etc.
One of the easiest and most accessible ways to get access to data is through Web scraping. That said, it is the perfect place in this article to define what web scraping means.
Web Scraping, as the name indicates, is the mechanism that lets you extract data from the web, basically any URL. It could be from blogs, e-commerce sites, listing sites, etc.
On a small scale, copying and pasting might be enough. Or keep a spreadsheet while you spend a significant amount of time on each of the websites and manually enter the data into a format with rows and columns to suit your needs.
Table of Contents:
Understanding Web Scraping
There are several challenges to this manual web scraping approach:
- Speed: It does not take too much to deduce that the manual web scraping process is slow and time-consuming.
- Tedium: Even the most motivated human cannot keep up with all the multiple site navigation, copy-pasting, formatting, etc.
- Error prone: As with any manual process, the effectiveness depends on the diligence of the human performing this task.
There are several web scraping tools in the market that automate this process and simplify it a great deal. However, automated web scraping tools might face challenges with:
- Technical challenges when they encounter checks such as Captcha.
- Customize the output format in a readily usable form for the users.
- Doing things ethically such as respecting the robot.txt, not overflooding or maintaining copyright laws.
We recently had the opportunity to evaluate the Oxylabs Web Scraper API and we wanted to share our experiences and candid reviews in this article. So, if you are in the market for a web scraper or curious about how web scraping tools work, read on.
Before we proceed any further, let’s get one pertinent question that I am sure is nagging some of our readers out of the way:
Is Web Scraping Illegal?
Web scraping for publicly available information is legal. Make sure private information is not acquired knowingly or unknowingly even for benign reasons. That is definitely not legal. We are not an absolute authority on this subject, please check your local laws for additional information.
Here are some local regulations that you should be aware of:
- GDPR or General Data Protection Regulations applies to most European countries
- CCPA or California Consumer Policy Act
- CFAA or Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
What is Oxylabs Web Scraper API
In short, Oxylabs Scraper APIs can extract public web data from web pages.
There are 4 types of APIs that it comes with:
- ERP Scraper API
- E-Commerce Scraper API
- Real Estate API
- Web Scraper API
From the names of the APIs, it is self-explanatory that each of these APIs specializes in different business areas.
Feature Highlights
A quick look at its website lists its salient features as:
- Paying only per successful results
- Easy access to localized content
- Effortless scaling for your growing needs
- 102M+ proxy pool
- Data delivery to your cloud storage bucket (AWS S3 or GCS)
- 24/7 support via live chat and email
At a glance, Oxylabs Web Scraper offers 4 APIs as can be seen below:
Pricing
- Starting at $49/month.
- There is a free one-week trial for any of your chosen scraper APIs.
Also, there are two modes of pricing.
Regular:
Enterprise:
Check the website for the most accurate pricing info.
As per their blog, all the plans except for Corporate and Custom+, can be purchased through their self-service dashboard. To purchase a Corporate or Custom+ plan you are going to have to contact their sales team.
They also offer a dedicated account manager if you need help with implementation and customize the web scraping strategy to fit your organization’s needs.
>> Click here for their self-service dashboard.
Suggested Read =>> Top commercial and free open-source API Management Tools
Oxylabs Web Scraper APIs: Explained
Oxylabs has different APIs that range from generic web scraping to specific business areas such as search engine data, eCommerce, and real estate. This is especially helpful and does not reinvent the wheel. You can get an almost out-of-the-box, business area-specific implementation from the get-go.
For new users on their web scraping journey, below are some aspects to consider:
Steps to get started:
#1) Identify your web scraping needs. Some of the questions that will help you get more apparent requirements are:
- What kind of data would you like as an outcome of this effort?
- Frequency of scraping. If you envision this to be a regular activity, consider including a scheduler.
- Integration with your existing or other APIs.
- Final destination, would you like this to be a real-time data output or should this go into more permanent cloud-based storage, such as AWS, GCP, etc?
#2) Check Oxylabs Web Scraper APIs and read up on features and documentation to get a sense of what services you can get and if it matches your expectations
#3) Oxylabs Web Scraper has really good technical support in place. Go to their website and chat with a support member to book a demo.
#4) The next step is to test drive Oxylabs Test Scraper APIs. To do so, you can get a free 7-day trial. Some of their APIs can be tested or trialed by checking out their git repos and some start with setting up your dashboard. How exactly each API works is outlined in the next sections.
#5) After your week’s trial you will have a pretty good idea about whether or not Oxylabs web Scraper API would work for your case.
Deep dive into the scraper APIs:
#1) Web Scraper API
The world wide web is a whole lot of information and anyone who wants to keep tabs on any generic data, trends, or changes can get quickly overwhelmed or run into technical challenges early in the process. Oxylabs web scraper API can manage proxies and scale them to fit your or your organization’s needs.
It supports both HTML websites and sites that use JavaScript rendering. So whether you are looking for a pricing update on a travel ticket or if you are a sports fanatic who wants to keep tabs on scores or auctions, this is the API for you.
Best features:
- Patented Proxy Rotator for block management
- Auto-retry system for failed scraping attempts
- Country-specific geo-targeting
- JavaScript rendering
- Recurring job scheduling
To begin trying the Oxylabs Web Scraper API, you can create a trial account or purchase the product, you will receive access to login to the Dashboard.
Follow these steps to create an API User:
- Login to the dashboard.
- Create an API user.
- Run the test query and continue with the setup.
Web Scraper API is an easy-to-use tool that doesn’t need any particular infrastructure or resources from the customer’s side. All you have to do is select a few parameters:
- Choose target links, location (especially geocodes/ geo locations), and JS parameters.
- Add custom headers and cookies but if you would like to delegate this part, Oxylabs technical support can help
- Submit a GET or POST request.
- Get Data via REST API either in real-time or to a more pertinent cloud of your choice
But if you are a technical evaluator, an example Python-based implementation of the Oxylabs Web Scraper API can be found in the git repo. Clone the repo and put it to the test!
Refer to this for more comprehensive usage guides/documentation and video tutorials.
#2) SERP Scraper API
In recent times, all information retrieval by internet users of all kinds is through search engines. Therefore optimizing websites for search result retrieval is a critical process for any business with an online presence. This is what scraping search results and metadata from search engine results can prove to be a game changer.
Oxylabs supports many commonly used search engines such as:
- Bing
- Baidu
- Yandex
You can choose to get both organic and paid results in your output. The output itself can be JSON or raw HTML.
Best features:
- Patented Proxy Rotator for block management
- Auto-retry system for failed scraping attempts
- Data parsing
- Country, city, or coordinate-level geo-targeting
- JavaScript rendering
- Recurring jobs scheduling
Also refer:
The trial process for the SERP scraper is similar to that of the others. You will need to purchase a plan or sign up for a free trial to gain access to the API.
After gaining access to the dashboard, it is as simple as:
- Login to dashboard
- Set up your API Query parameters
- Set up your output specifications
- Run the API calls
#3) E-Commerce Scraper API
eCommerce is a business domain that needs no explanation of what it is. It is hard to remember a time before online shopping. Most businesses utilize eCommerce web data for pricing analysis and decision, market analysis, competitor analysis, and catalog mapping.
These are just some business use cases but whatever your needs may be, a reliable scraping mechanism can deliver targeted, localized, maintenance-free, easy-to-set-up solutions.
Oxylabs E-Commerce Scraper API supports scraping from popular businesses such as:
- Amazon
- Walmart
- eBay
- Target
- HomeDepot, etc.
You can really get data from any part of the world.
Best Features:
- Patented Proxy Rotator for block management
- Auto-retry system for failed scraping attempts
- Country or postal code geo-targeting
- ML-based Adaptive Parser
- JavaScript rendering
- Recurring jobs scheduling
- Delivery location set up
Also refer:
To try this API and gain access to the dashboard, subscribe for a free trial or purchase plan.
#4) Real Estate API
As the name indicates, Oxylabs web scraper API is for localized real estate sites, real-time and at scale. It works with most of the popular sites such as Zillow, Realestate, Redfin, Zoopla, etc.
You can customize your search criteria such as prices, locations, amenities, property types, days on the market, lot sizes, etc. The API delivers the information in HTML output format in real-time or to the cloud.
Best Features:
- No CAPTCHAs or IP blocks
- Cost-efficient scraping
- JavaScript rendering
- Auto-retry system for failed scraping attempts
- Patented Proxy Rotator for block management
>> Click here for more information.
Developers can get the trial the right way by cloning the repo.
Caveat: To authenticate you will need to enable your free 7-day trial. Once that’s done, you will receive the username and password to authenticate.
With the git repo, you should be all set to give this a go and evaluate your specific business needs.
Basically, the process is as simple as:
- Create your input criteria or query
- Send the query to the API
- Receive the result.
There is also support for a scheduler if you tend to scrape periodically.
Oxylabs Web Scraper Advantages
As with any automation tool, the framework and the processes are in place. Therefore, it’s easy to get started and is maintenance-free.
- Paying only for successful results, etc.
- Compliance with local laws
- Good technical support or quick chat for general queries
- Technical trials for savvy users. All you need are a GitHub account and basic Python know-how.
- As a technical user, what stands out is the thorough documentation. Before you adapt Oxylabs web scraper, you have a totally transparent API and API documentation that can answer the ‘Hows’ for you even before you begin your web scraping journey.
- If you want to get code examples of more than just web scrapers, follow this link https://github.com/oxylabs
What’s not so good about Oxylabs Web Scraper?
- Price: For smaller teams or startups, the pricing could be an overhead.
- Set up: Getting the initial setup right is a bit of a challenge. The cheaper residential proxies may not cover your needs and might force the customers to upgrade.
- Specialized business support is available only for RealEstate, Search Engine,s and eCommerce sites. Other kinds of data scraping will need to be customized using the generic web scraper API.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q #1) Does it work with websites that use JavaScript rendering?
Answer: The easiest way to tell if a website uses JavaScript vs. HTML is to check its source. If the information is not available in the source then it’s a Javascript rendering mechanism at play. Oxylabs Web Scraper APIs can work in this situation too.
Q #2) How long does it take to get results back?
Answer: In most cases, 10 seconds or so. But it really depends on your query.
Q #3) Will Oxylabs support recurring scraping and parsing jobs?
Answer: Yes. Oxylabs offers a free scheduler.
Bonus: Web Unblocker
Every now and then all web scrapers run into complex websites from which data extraction isn’t straightforward. Oxylabs has an AI-powered proxy solution that handles the unblocking process to extract web public data by bypassing advanced anti-bot systems and scraping as an organic user.
Best Features:
- ML-driven proxy management: Selects the best possible proxy pool for your target website.
- Dynamic fingerprinting: Picks the right headers, cookies, browser attributes, and proxies to bypass blocks by masking your bot’s identity.
- ML-powered response recognition: Creates an effective feedback loop between the scraping results and the experimentation engine to determine the outcome quality.
- Auto-retry functionality: If a scraping task fails, our system chooses a new set of parameters and resends the request.
- JavaScript rendering: We render JavaScript web pages on our end, so all you have to do is provide the necessary header in your request along with the preferred output format.
- Session control: Use different IPs with each request, or use the same IP address with all the following requests for up to 10 minutes.
A free trial is available for web unblockers too. More information is available here:
This table nicely summarizes how web unblocker is different from other self-managed proxies.
>> Click here for other product offerings by Oxylabs.
Suggested reading =>> How to use Octoparse web scrapper
Conclusion
We hope you have enjoyed reading through this deep dive into Oxylabs Web Scraping capabilities and its Web, E-commerce, Real Estate, and SERP APIs. As with any tool, doing your research and considering alternatives with a side-by-side comparison is the best way to go forward with your decision.
In the journey to a successful web scraping endeavor, we hope you will find this article and its evaluation/review helpful.
Please let us know your thoughts, comments, and experiences below. What other alternative web scraping tools have you found helpful?
If you have been an Oxylabs Web Scraper API user, what has your experience been like? We would love to hear!