SoFunction
Updated on 2025-03-04

Advanced usage of Python web crawler technology

Web crawlers have become the core tool for automated data crawling. Python has powerful third-party library support and is particularly widely used in the field of web crawlers. This article will explore in-depth advanced usage of Python web crawlers, including technologies such as handling anti-crawler mechanisms, dynamic web crawlers, distributed crawlers, and concurrent and asynchronous crawlers. The following content combines the latest technological developments to help readers master advanced Python crawler technology.

1. Review of commonly used Python crawler tools

1.1 Requests and BeautifulSoup

RequestsandBeautifulSoupIt is a commonly used combination in Python for crawling and parsing static web pages. Requests handles HTTP requests, while BeautifulSoup parses HTML content.

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# Initiate HTTP requestresponse = ('')
# parse HTML contentsoup = BeautifulSoup(, '')

# Extract specific elementstitle = ('title').text
print(title)

1.2 Scrapy

ScrapyIt is a powerful crawler framework suitable for large projects and scenarios that require efficient crawling. Scrapy provides a complete crawling process, supporting asynchronous crawling, data storage and other functions.

# crawler sample code, need to be used in Scrapy projectimport scrapy

class ExampleSpider():
    name = 'example'
    start_urls = ['']

    def parse(self, response):
        title = ('title::text').get()
        yield {'title': title}

2. Dynamic web page data crawling

Data in dynamic web pages is usually rendered by JavaScript, and traditional crawler tools cannot be directly obtained. You can use it at this timeSeleniumorPyppeteeretc. to crawl dynamic web pages.

2.1 Selenium Dynamic Crawling

Selenium simulates browser behavior, loads and renders dynamic web pages, suitable for handling complex interactive pages.

from selenium import webdriver

# Initialize WebDriverdriver = ()

# Open dynamic web page('')

# Wait for the page to fully loaddriver.implicitly_wait(5)

# Get the web page source codehtml = driver.page_source

# Close the browser()

2.2 Pyppeteer dynamic crawling

PyppeteerIt is a Python version of Puppeteer, which uses a headless browser to crawl dynamic pages, suitable for scenarios that require efficient crawling.

import asyncio
from pyppeteer import launch

async def main():
    browser = await launch()
    page = await ()
    await ('')
    content = await ()
    print(content)
    await ()

asyncio.get_event_loop().run_until_complete(main())

3. Anti-crawler mechanism and response strategies

To prevent data abuse, many websites have introduced anti-crawler mechanisms. Common anti-crawler methods include IP ban, request frequency limit, verification code, etc. To deal with these mechanisms, the following strategies can be adopted:

3.1 Simulate user behavior

By adjusting the request header information and behavior patterns, the operations of real users can be simulated, thereby bypassing the anti-crawler mechanism.

headers = {
    'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/91.0.4472.124 Safari/537.36'
}

response = ('', headers=headers)

3.2 Using the proxy pool

Use proxy IP to hide the crawler's real IP and avoid being banned. Blocking can be avoided by rotating multiple agents.

proxies = {
    'http': 'http://10.10.1.10:3128',
    'https': 'http://10.10.1.10:1080',
}

response = ('', proxies=proxies)

3.3 Cookie and Session Processing

To stay logged in or simulate user interaction, crawlers need to handle cookies and sessions.RequestsThe library provides session-holding functionality.

# Use session keepsession = ()

# Set initial cookies('name', 'value')

# Send a request with a cookieresponse = ('')

4. Advanced Scrapy Applications

ScrapyThe framework not only supports basic crawler functions, but also extends functions through middleware, pipeline and other mechanisms.

4.1 Data storage and processing

ScrapyIt provides a variety of data storage methods, which supports the storage of the crawled data directly to the database or file.

# Exampleimport pymongo

class MongoPipeline:

    def open_spider(self, spider):
         = ("mongodb://localhost:27017/")
         = ["example_db"]

    def close_spider(self, spider):
        ()

    def process_item(self, item, spider):
        .example_collection.insert_one(dict(item))
        return item

4.2 Distributed crawler

For large projects, distributed crawlers can significantly improve crawling speed and efficiency. Scrapy can be combinedRedisImplement distributed crawling.

# Use scrapy-redis for distributed crawling in a Scrapy project# Install scrapy-redis and configureSCHEDULER = "scrapy_redis."
DUPEFILTER_CLASS = "scrapy_redis."

5. Distributed crawlers and asynchronous crawlers

In order to improve crawling efficiency, distributed and asynchronous crawlers are very important technologies. Python providesasyncioandaiohttpAsynchronous libraries such as this can effectively improve concurrent crawling capabilities.

5.1 asyncio and aiohttp

asyncioandaiohttpIt is a Python asynchronous programming library that supports the concurrent execution of multiple network requests.

import asyncio
import aiohttp

async def fetch(session, url):
    async with (url) as response:
        return await ()

async def main():
    async with () as session:
        html = await fetch(session, '')
        print(html)

(main())

5.2 Multithreading and multiprocessing

For CPU-intensive tasks, Python'sLibrary to implement multi-threading and multi-process concurrency.

from  import ThreadPoolExecutor

def fetch(url):
    response = (url)
    return 

with ThreadPoolExecutor(max_workers=5) as executor:
    results = (fetch, [''] * 5)
    for result in results:
        print(result)

6. Crawler data storage and processing

After the crawler crawls a large amount of data, it needs to be stored and processed effectively. Common storage methods include database storage and file storage.

6.1 Database storage

Crawler data can be stored in relational databases (such as MySQL) or non-relational databases (such as MongoDB).

import pymysql

# Connect to MySQL databaseconnection = (host='localhost',
                             user='user',
                             password='passwd',
                             db='database')

# Insert datawith () as cursor:
    sql = "INSERT INTO `table` (`column1`, `column2`) VALUES (%s, %s)"
    (sql, ('value1', 'value2'))
    ()

6.2 File storage

For small-scale data, you can directly store the data as a CSV or JSON format file.

import csv

# Write to CSV filewith open('', mode='w') as file:
    writer = (file)
    (['column1', 'column2'])
    (['value1', 'value2'])

7. Practical case: E-commerce website product data capture

In actual projects, crawlers are often used to crawl product information on e-commerce websites. The following is a simple product data crawling process:

useRequestsGet the product list page. useBeautifulSoupAnalyze HTML and extract product information. Stores data into a CSV file.

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import csv

# Send HTTP requestresponse = ('/products')

# parse HTML contentsoup = BeautifulSoup(, '')

# Extract product informationproducts = soup.find_all('div', class_='product')

# Write to CSV filewith open('', mode='w') as file:
    writer = (file)
    (['Product Name', 'Price'])

    for product in products:
        name = ('h2').text
        price = ('span', class_='price').text
        ([name, price])

8. Conclusion

By learning the content of this article, readers should master the advanced usage of Python web crawlers and be able to deal with anti-crawler mechanisms, crawl dynamic web pages, and implement distributed and asynchronous crawlers. Web crawler technology has extensive applications in data capture, information collection, etc. Mastering these skills will greatly improve the efficiency of data processing and analysis.

This is the end of this article about the advanced usage of Python web crawler technology. For more related content on advanced usage of Python crawlers, please search for my previous articles or continue browsing the related articles below. I hope everyone will support me in the future!