Web Crawling with Playwright: A Cross-Browser Solution

Hands-on web crawling with Playwright

Recently, many engaged in data collection of the old iron are asking, with Playwright this new tool to do the crawler in the end is not reliable? Frankly speaking, this thing is indeed faster than the old Selenium a lot, but encountered the site anti-climbing still have to kneel. This time we have to move out of oursecret weapon--Proxy IPs, especially from a reliable provider like ipipgo.

Why do I have to use a proxy IP?

For example, you even use your own broadband to brush an e-commerce site, not ten minutes will be blocked IP. this time if there are dozens of proxy IP round, like playing chicken games open stealth hang, the site simply can not feel your real position. ipipgo home dynamic residential proxy pool, each request can be changed to a new IP, more stable than with a fixed IP.

// Basic Playwright configuration
const { chromium } = require('playwright');

async function run() {
  const browser = await chromium.launch();
  const page = await browser.newPage(); await page.goto(''); const page = await browser.
  await page.goto('https://example.com');
  // ... Manipulating the code
  await browser.close(); }
}

The Three Pitfalls of Selecting a Proxy Pool

Agent service providers on the market can open grocery stores, but there are really not many reliable. Recently helped customers debugging found:

Real-world Configuration Secrets

Here's a configuration plan that was debugged and passed in a real project. Look at the proxy settings, use ipipgo's API to get the proxy dynamically, it's much more flexible than writing a dead IP address:

const { chromium } = require('playwright');
const axios = require('axios');

async function getProxy() {
  // Replace this with the ipipgo API address.
  const res = await axios.get('https://api.ipipgo.com/getproxy');
  return res.data.proxy; }
}

async function smartCrawler() {
  const proxyConfig = await getProxy(); const browser = await chromium.launch({}); } async function smartCrawler()
  const browser = await chromium.launch({
    proxy: {
      server: `http://${proxyConfig.ip}:${proxyConfig.port}`, username: proxyConfig.user, `http://${proxyConfig.ip}:${proxyConfig.port}`, {
      username: proxyConfig.user, { password: proxyConfig.user, { proxyConfig.password: proxyConfig.user
      password: proxyConfig.pass
    }
  });

  // Fake the browser fingerprint
  const context = await browser.newContext({
    userAgent: 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0) AppleWebKit/537.36...'
  }).

  const page = await context.newPage(); await page.goto(''); await browser.newContext()
  await page.goto('https://target-site.com', {timeout: 60000});
  // Follow-up capture operation...
}

Common Rollover Scene QA

Q: What should I do if I can't connect to the proxy IP all the time?
A: First check the proxy authorization method, ipipgo family proxy need to go to the username and password double verification, pay attention to the code there is no fill in the wrong. Then, test the availability of the proxy IP itself, their official website has an online testing tool.

Q: Using a proxy and still being recognized as a bot?
A: 80% of the browser fingerprints are exposed. Remember to configure the complete UA, screen resolution, time zone these parameters in newContext, it is best to change these configurations randomly on a regular basis.

Avoiding the pitfalls guide to focus on

Recently, I helped a client to do cross-border e-commerce price monitoring, and used ipipgo's agent pool + Playwright to get the Amazon data collection done. There are just three key points:Dynamic IP Rotation,Fingerprint Camouflage,Request frequency controlThe following is an example of how to use Playwright's headless mode. Be especially careful not to run Playwright's headless mode directly naked, in conjunction with a proxy service for long term stability.

Finally, to be honest, now the website anti-climbing mechanism is more and more perverted, just rely on technical means hard just certainly not. Like ipipgo such as specializing in proxy services, their IP pool update and maintenance is really professional, encounter large-scale collection needs can save a lot of things. Once we need to collect the project across the region, they can also be assigned by the city granularity proxy IP, this function is really fragrant.