Grabbing Hotel Data with Python: Price Comparison System

Real Case Study Teaches You to Weed Hotels with Python

Recently, I stepped into a big pit when I helped my friend to make a hotel price comparison tool - I just grabbed 3 websites and got my IP blocked. later, I used ipipgo's proxy IP pool, and now I can grab 2000+ hotels' data stably every day. Today, I will teach you how to use Python + proxy IP to play the hotel price comparison system.

Why can't I catch it without using a proxy IP?

The hotel platform's anti-crawler mechanism is more sophisticated than a mother-in-law:

1. 30 consecutive visits to a single IP direct blackout
2. Detecting regular visits directly popping the verification code
3. Stricter monitoring in the morning hours (don't ask me how I know)

This is where a proxy IP is needed to act as acloak of invisibility. Actual test with ipipgo's rotating IP service, the success rate shot straight up from 23% to 89%.

The Three Fateful Things About Choosing a Proxy IP

There are thousands of agents on the market, but you have to recognize these points to capture hotel data:

Special reminder: don't use those free proxies, last time I tried 20 free IPs, 19 of them have been pulled by the hotel platform.

Real-world code with comments

Take a course hotel, for example, serving hard food:

import requests
from random import choice

 API interface for ipipgo (request your own replacement)
IP_API = "http://ipipgo.com/api/get?key=你的密钥"

def get_proxy().
    """Dynamically get fresh IPs""""
    ips = requests.get(IP_API).json()['data']
    return {'http': f'http://{choice(ips)}'}

url = 'https://hotel.某程.com/list'
headers = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64...'}

try.
     New IP for each request
    response = requests.get(url,
                         headers=headers, proxies=get_proxy
                         proxies=get_proxy(), timeout=8)
                         timeout=8)
    print(response.text[:200]) see first 200 characters
except Exception as e.
    print(f "Crawl failed, but automatically switched IPs: {e}")

Highlight it three times:The timeout setting cannot be omitted! Some proxy IPs are slow to respond and not setting a timeout will jam the whole program.

Anti-Rollover Guide

I've stepped over these potholes for you:

1. 1-5 am the highest success rate (platform defense loose)
2. each request random sleep 1-3 seconds (simulation of real people)
3. immediately discard the current IP when encountering CAPTCHA
4. change the User-Agent every day (do not use fake UA)

In conjunction with ipipgo'spay per volumemode, the cost of doing comparison system can save 60% - after all, do not have to pay for invalid IP.

White QA triple

Q: What should I do if my proxy IP is slow?
A：在ipipgo后台选「速度优先」模式，实测能压到200ms内

Q: Will I be punished by the law?
A: Only grab public data, don't touch user information. It is recommended to crawl within the allowed range of robots.txt

Q: How much IP volume is needed per day?
A: For 200 hotels/day, 500-800 IPs are enough. ipipgo sends 500 IPs for new users to try!

Advanced Tips for Price Comparison System

Do this and you've surpassed the 80% competition:

1. Catch 3-5 platforms at the same time with multiple threads (pay attention to concurrency control)
2. Use ipipgo's "geo-targeting" function to capture specific cities.
3. data storage de-emphasis (different platforms may be the same hotel)
4. price fluctuation monitoring (set 10% rise and fall reminder)

One last flirty maneuver: using ipipgo'sLong-lasting static IPto do data monitoring, more stable than dynamic IP, suitable for scenarios that need to keep an eye on the price for a long time.

In technology, the most important thing is...uh, can run on the line. If you have any questions, please feel free to chat in the comment section. If your code doesn't work, remember to check if you forgot to change the API key.