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Web scraping dynamic websites: Tips for automated data harvesting

Contents of article:

• Dynamic web page scraping: challenges, solutions, and HTTPS proxy lists to buy
  • Keeping up with HTML changes
  • Single-page applications (SPAs) and client-side routing
  • Accessing data that loads asynchronously

Dynamic websites are popular due to higher performance, personalized content delivery, faster updating, smooth API integration, and so on. These pages contain terabytes of publicly open information, which is crucial for price comparison, machine learning, SEO, brand protection, and other business goals achieved through web data harvesting through the best datacenter proxies.

The dynamic sites’ event-driven architecture and solutions, such as AJAX, JavaScript frameworks and single-page applications (SPAs), hamper automatic collection of accurate data via Python, Java, and similar frameworks. Buying residential IP addresses from Dexodata, an ethical ecosystem which provides rotating proxies with HTTP(S) and SOCKS5 support, solves issues with reliable requests' sending and a credible fingerprint. Handling other obstacles of dynamic online sources’ scraping on automatic requires leveraging additional techniques.

Dynamic web page scraping: challenges, solutions, and HTTPS proxy lists to buy

Sending recurrent requests from a reliable IP, this is the reason to buy a HTTPS proxy list, and rotate addresses avoiding target sources’ limits. Despite defensive algorithms, there are other tasks which could be challenging to boost the ethical info extraction from dynamic pages:

1. Changing HTML
2. Single-page applications (SPAs) routing
3. Asynchronous data loading
4. Accessing shadow DOM components.

Each mission has numerous aspects to consider.

Keeping up with HTML changes

Headless browsers, automation tools and the best datacenter proxies, or even 3G/4G/LTE ones, are among necessary tools to obtain online insights at scale. Handling JavaScript-based sources demands:

• Reducing maintenance by applying text-based selectors (or aria-label).
• Deploying CSS Selector Generator to evade complex CSS selectors. This minimizes disruptions in shifting HTML chapters.
• Intercepting API requests and gaining information as JSON to avoid HTML. Requests and aiohttp have such features.
• Healing locators in Selenium WebDriver scripts through Helinium.

Single-page applications (SPAs) and client-side routing

Single-page applications update HTML content partially. goto and waitFor functions of Playwright, Puppeteer and other browser automation tools can therefore send false signals on page’s load, even if you buy residential IP and rotate external addresses within geolocated pools.

The solution lies in implementing additional checks by Cypress and WebdriverIO, which confirm the correct state and then proceed to the page. Checking page titles or specific elements raises the accuracy of navigation through SPAs.

Accessing data that loads asynchronously

Dynamic internet structures may show content on user’s interaction or scrolling, without the need for the full page’s loading. To handle it, strive for:

1. Utilize waitForResponse, waitForSelector, and other event-driven predicates in Playwright.
2. Buy HTTPS proxy lists from strictly KYC and AML-compliant ecosystems.
3. Vary strategies of gaining HTML elements, leverage ARIA attributes and Playwright’s built-in waiting locators for precise state specification.
4. Avoid Selenium’s direct application in favor of Selenide (Java) or WebdriverIO (JS), as they provide adjustable automatic synchronization and waiting features.

Accessing lazily loaded content that appears on demand or after user’s interactions leads to the necessity of buying residential IPs and mimicking user behavior:

Extracting dynamic elements from shadow DOM components requires reverse engineering at detecting their open and closed properties. JavaScript DOM methods — getElements, innerHTML, childNodes, etc. — assist recursive querying through shadow roots.

The best datacenter proxies by Dexodata are fully compatible with open source technologies for data harvesting mentioned above. Other ethical solutions we offer include residential and mobile addresses, and we recommend buying HTTPS proxy lists of these types for scraping dynamic sites. Sign up to get a free proxy trial, and access extended pools of versatile IP addresses immediately.