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Show HN: Crawlee for Python – a web scraping and browser automation library

crawlee.dev

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Re: Show HN: Crawlee for Python – a web scraping and browser automation library

#11

Do you have any plans to monetize this? How are you supporting development?

Crawlee is open source and free to use and we don't have any plans to monetize it in future. It will be always free to use.

We provide Apify platform to publish your scrapers as Actors for the developer community, and developers earn money through it. You can use Crawlee for Python as well :)

tldr; Crawlee is and always will be free to use and open sourced.

Re: Show HN: Crawlee for Python – a web scraping and browser automation library

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask - what is anti-blocking?

Usually refers to “evading bot detection”. Detecting when blocked and switching proxy/“browser fingerprint”.

Is this a good feature to include? Shouldn't we respect the host's settings on this?

Re: Show HN: Crawlee for Python – a web scraping and browser automation library

#14

Looks nice, and modern python. The code example on the front page has this: `const data = await crawler.get_data()` That looks like Javascript? Is there a missing underscore?

Oh wow, thanks! Will fix it right away. Crawlee is originally a JS library.

Re: Show HN: Crawlee for Python – a web scraping and browser automation library

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually refers to “evading bot detection”. Detecting when blocked and switching proxy/“browser fingerprint”.

Is this a good feature to include? Shouldn't we respect the host's settings on this?

It’s a fair and totally reasonable question but clashes with reality. Many hosts have data that others want/like to scrape (eBay, Amazon, Google, airlines, etc.) and they setup anti-scraping mechanisms to try and prevent scraping. Whether or not to respect those desires is a bigger question but not one for the scraping library - it’s one for those doing the scraping and their lawyers.

The fact is - many many people want to scrape these sites and there is massive demand for tools to help them do that, so if APIFY/Crawlee decide to take the moral ground and not offer a way around bot detection, someone else will.

Re: Show HN: Crawlee for Python – a web scraping and browser automation library

#16
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a good feature to include? Shouldn't we respect the host's settings on this?

It’s a fair and totally reasonable question but clashes with reality. Many hosts have data that others want/like to scrape (eBay, Amazon, Google, airlines, etc.) and they setup anti-scraping mechanisms to try and prevent scraping. Whether or not to respect those desires is a bigger question but not one for the scraping library - it’s one for those doing the scraping and their lawyers. The fact is - many many people w…

Ah yes, the old 'if I don't build the bombs for them, someone else will'. I don't think this is taking the moral high ground, this is saying we don't care whether it's moral, there's demand and we'll build it.

Re: Show HN: Crawlee for Python – a web scraping and browser automation library

#17
I found crawlee a few days ago while figuring out a stack for a project. I wanted a python library but found crawlee with typescript so much easier that I ended up coding the entire project in less than a week in Typescript+Crawlee+Playwright

I found the api a lot better than any python scraping api till date. However I am tempted to try out python with Crawlee.

The playwright integration with gotScraping makes the entire programming experience a breeze. My crawling and scraping involves all kinds of frontend rendered websites with a lot of modified XHR responses to be captured. And IT JUST WORKS!

Thanks a ton . I will definitely use the Apify platform to scale given the integration.

Re: Show HN: Crawlee for Python – a web scraping and browser automation library

#18
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a fair and totally reasonable question but clashes with reality. Many hosts have data that others want/like to scrape (eBay, Amazon, Google, airlines, etc.) and they setup anti-scraping mechanisms to try and prevent scraping. Whether or not to respect those desires is a bigger question but not one for the scraping library - it’s one for those doing the scraping and their lawyers. The fact is - many many people w…

Ah yes, the old 'if I don't build the bombs for them, someone else will'. I don't think this is taking the moral high ground, this is saying we don't care whether it's moral, there's demand and we'll build it.

I'm not gonna feel bad if a corporation gets its data scraped (whenever it's legal to do so, and this is another kind of question I'm not knowledgeable enough to face) when they themselves try to scrape other companies' data
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