Doing web scraping is relatively simple, it all depends on the amount of information you need to extract from a website. You can do it manually, although there are also tools and software that help with the task. One of these tools is User Agent Generator API, continue reading Why Is It So Necessary To Have The Random User Agent API On Your Website? we will tell you more about it.
How does web scraping work or what is web scraping?
Manual web scraping
Manual scraping is as simple as selecting, copying, and pasting the data or content of a web page. It is used when you want to scrape a small page or a specific section of any web.
When the page is very large, or it is necessary to collect complex information, this technique is very laborious and is rarely used in those cases.
Imagine the work it can take to extract information from many competitor websites to study them using manual scraping. It is not profitable for the scraper.
Automatic web scraping
It is the most common way of doing web scraping. It is used to obtain large amounts of data from one or many web pages. To carry it out, it is necessary to use an algorithm or software that extracts the information.
There are different ways to do it:
By using bots
They are programmed to do different tasks automatically; in this case, extract information from a website.
Through a parser or parser
A parser converts a piece of text into another type of structure to store the information.
Text analysis
This method is for experienced scrapers. Use the Unix “grep” function to find some web terms in Perl or Python. This method requires much more work than simply using the software.
How to detect and block web scraping?
Large Internet companies use web scraping to obtain information from many websites.
We are not just talking about Google, but about many others that can access the information on your website using the techniques that we have seen in the previous section.
Therefore, since it is something that can happen sooner or later, it is important to prevent web scraping on your website.
Although there are many quite technical ways at the computer level to avoid web scraping, here are some simple tips so that you can detect and block it yourself.
User Agent Generator API
So, User Agent Generator API is an extensive database of (325.000+ user agent strings) user-agent strings which are quickly accessible with a simple endpoint. We offer to filter the random results with many parameters such as operating system, device type, and browser. Generate random User Agents with this API for your projects. Be able to scrape or access any website as the User Agent of your choice.
This API will receive the selected device and operating systems of your choice and it will deliver a randomly generated User Agent. After signing up, every developer gets a personal API access key; a unique combination of letters and digits provided to access to the API endpoint. To authenticate with the User Agent Generator API REST API, simply include your bearer token in the Authorization header.
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