DEV Community: MigdaliazStevensonc

Smartproxy Review

MigdaliazStevensonc — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 07:03:31 +0000

Surf the internet without restrictions, collect data or protect your privacy. Smartproxy gives you the ability to do it all in one place.

Smartproxy is one of the latest rotating residential proxy services to hit the market. Smartproxy offers its users immense features and functionality at affordable rates. If you’re looking for a long-term proxy service to stick to, it’s worth looking at Smartproxy’s unique offerings. The company promises to deliver one of the best proxy services for both residential, business, and commercial demands. It’s one of the first companies to offer its services to all kinds of people.

Whether you’re just looking for a proxy for your personal security reasons or you want to be able to expand your business through ad targeting, it’s all possible with Smartproxy. This proxy gives you unlimited access to the internet without getting blocked off and restricted by your geographical location.

Features

Smartproxy has a host of useful features that it offers that many other proxy services can’t provide. As far as usage goes, it provides great performance no matter what you set it up to do. For average everyday use, it provides great upload and download speeds for streaming music, videos, TV shows, and movies. You’ll also get superior security and features to add on top of that. Here are some of the features you can expect from using Smartproxy.

Multiple Locations

Smartproxy doesn’t limit you to a single-digit limit of countries you can connect to. This service is global in the true sense by providing you with connectivity to any part of the world. While you’re usually limited to a few major cities and countries from most proxies, this service gives you unlimited access to over 190 countries.

This means that you get access to some of the most out-of-the-way locations out there. But at the same time, you will also get the best browsing, downloading, and uploading speeds from the top countries. You can get premium access points to major cities from top countries like the US, Canada, UK, Germany, India, and Turkey.

Large IP Pool

There’s nothing worse than getting a proxy to circumvent geographical restrictions and bans only to have 4 or 5 IPs that can just as easily get banned again. With companies getting more aware of proxy services and creating more restrictions, this is a growing problem.

But Smartproxy manages to get around that problem easily. By providing millions of residential IPs, it makes it easy for you to get past restrictions easily while never running out of IPs to use. Smartproxy offers 10 million residential IPs with unlimited connections and threads. You have access to countless IPs from any country in the world that has more than 50 connections.

Guaranteed Uptime

Smartproxy offers a continuous service through and throughout without facing any serious downtime. This service guarantees you 99.9% uptime for your proxy connections. You won’t get disconnected in the middle of your usage or face any kind of speed throttling. You can enjoy safe, anonymous, and secure connections seamlessly without any issues.

Independent IPs

The best part about Smartproxy is that you have access to multiple independent IPs at the same time. This allows you to do things like control multiple different accounts from just one place. This can enable you to manage multiple different social media accounts without breaking a sweat. You can use your favorite social media boosting tools like Gramista, Follow Liker, Instmacro, Gramdominator, and Jarvee.

Security

Smartproxy enables you to remain completely secure as you browse through the internet. You can be sure that no one is monitoring your network traffic. You can also be safe from anyone trying to track your location via your IP.

The best thing about this proxy service is that you have great control over multiple IPs that can be used intermittently. You can get an IP from a random pool of millions with the ability to keep a sticky session active or switch with rotating sessions on the fly.

Undetectable Automation

There are many automation techniques that can be easily sniffed out by sites constantly. You can use multiple proxies to behave just like human users, so you can avoid any bans.

This means that you can carry out high levels of automation techniques like price comparison, travel fare aggregation, data collection, and SEO-related activities. Because Smartproxy uses residential IPs it doesn’t trip the bot detection algorithms for any website’s defenses.

Unlimited Connections

One of the greatest features of this service is the fact that you can get unlimited connections at one time. Smartproxy allows you to have as many connections and threads going on at one time. You can have multiple IPs going at one time around the world. You can get a lot of work done fast and efficiently all at once with minimal effort.

This makes this like data collection easy and straightforward especially if you’re already strapped for time. Another area where this is useful is when there are limited product releases. You can get around the system of limited purchases per person by using multiple connections simultaneously. There’s included integration for all the popular sneaker bots like BNB, Supreme, Easy Cop, Nike Slayer, AIO, and Another Nike Bot.

Reliability

Smartproxy is one of the most reliable proxy services that you will find. The speeds are stable enough that you don’t see a drop in downloading and browsing performance. Your connection will work without any kind of downtime so there won’t be any interruptions in your work. Even in some remote parts of the world, you will get a stable enough performance than other major proxy services.

Compatibility

Smartproxy provides exceptional compatibility across the board. You won’t find any kind of compatibility issues on this service at all. It supports all the usual protocols like IPV4 and HTTPS. You can also use it with any desktop or mobile VPN applications that use the standard HTTP/HTTPS protocols. No matter what your favorite proxy application is, you can integrate Smartproxy easily into it.

Pricing

Smartproxy has multiple plans suited for anyone from basic end-users to commercial and business users. You can choose any one of the four plans that offer different levels of data bandwidth that can be used. Plans start from as low as $75 a month and go as far up as $600 per month. You get an amount of allotted data that comes with the plan and you can pay for any surplus on top.

With a higher plan, you have to place less per GB of data. Every plan except for the cheapest plan has a 3-day money-back guarantee so you can get a refund if your service isn’t working properly. You can pay for your subscription with multiple payment methods like Paypal, Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and even cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Customer Support

Smartproxy has excellent customer support across the board for its customers. Whether you’re having problems making something work or you don’t know how to use the service, the team will help you out. There are multiple channels available for you to be able to reach the support team.

Along with the usual support email, you also have a 24/7 live chat. They also have an extremely good social media presence so you can reach them on any platform and be able to reach them without fail. The response is usually prompt and helpful.

Our Verdict

Smartproxy brings a lot of usability and features into the mix. It provides users with great functionality and it’s incredibly useful for a lot of different applications. While it has a few hitches here and there, it provides a good enough service to make up for it. Rest assured, Smartproxy is more than capable of meeting all your proxy needs no matter what they may be.

Bright Data Review

MigdaliazStevensonc — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 07:49:26 +0000

Scrape data reliably with Bright Data. Get connected to large proxy network with expert data scraping tools and professional features.

Bright Data is leading residential rotating proxy service that is designed for corporate use. All of the service’s functional elements serve to cater specifically to the needs of businesses and companies looking to get any kind of data or analytics.

This service has been around for some time and its built up a fair reputation for itself. It has garnered up a substantial amount of professional clientele which mostly includes large firms and fortune 500 companies. Bright Data provides one of the best proxy services for any kind of data-related purpose. It’s definitely worth looking into if you’re in the market for a proxy service to help you scrape data.

Features

There are many rotational proxy services out there built to help with all kinds of purposes. But often you’ll find that few are focusing on a single functional path. Most of these services advertise themselves as multifunctional offerings to help with everything from everyday needs to large business data collection.

This kind of approach makes them a jack of all trades but a master of none. Bright Data doesn’t contain this kind of problem. This service focuses itself simply on a single avenue of use. This way you get the best of what the service has to offer. Here are the features you can expect from using Bright Data’s proxy service.

Global Coverage

The coverage spread of Bright Data’s proxy service won’t leave you wanting. As of now, they support just about any place on the map with around 223 countries supported. Within these countries, you have a widespread of all the major cities and towns as well as lesser-known areas.

There are a total of 26,846 cities supported which means you get access to even the most areas on the planet with relative ease. No other proxy service can even manage to come close to the number of countries and cities supported by Bright Data. This means that you get a very large sample size for your data that you can use to get the most accurate results.

Consistent Uptime

Connections issues and speed throttling are a thing of the past with Bright Data. The service promises to give you a guaranteed 99.9% uptime for any IP or region you connect to. They even have specialized features integrated into the service to help you to monitor any downtime.

There’s a real-time network monitor included in the service which helps you monitor the status of the connections. You can monitor the health of all the different types of connections available to you easily.

Multiple IP Types

There’s no point having a large amount of IPs from your proxy if they all point to the same source. Bright Data tries to bring a large amount of variety into the mix by having multiple types of IPs.

In addition to having traditional broadband residential IPs you also have other IP types such as shared proxies, data center private proxies, residential IPs and mobile IPs. This gives you a diverse enough pool to use your IPs for any purpose.

Dedicated Proxy Manager

Probably one of the most shining features of this proxy service is its dedicated proxy manager. The Bright Data proxy manager is open source desktop application available to you as a subscriber. It’s built with data scraping in mining and can really help speed up the process of collecting data quickly and efficiently.

The Bright Data Proxy Manager has all the right scraping tools built-in, so you don’t need to go spend time and money looking for other scraping applications. It has features like reserving IPs based on their speed, rotating IPs round the clock, SOCKS routing requests, auto-retry on failed requests, limiting requests, banning IPs, speed improvements, and adding multiple vendors. This allows you to carry out your work with a higher rate of efficiency and performance. It will also reduce your bandwidth costs in the long run.

Concurrent Sessions

Bright Data works efficiently by implementing multiple sessions occurring at the same time. You won’t have to keep manually launching and managing groups of IPs when you can seamlessly automate them. You’ll be able to collect data much quicker and more reliably.

You also have the option of connecting to multiple different points with these sessions. Bright Data allows you to connect up to 11,748 ASNs as well as 592 mobile ASNs which is great for getting a ton of traffic out from various access points.

Fully Patented and Legal

Most services you will encounter out there are barely on the verge of being legal and don’t really any safeguards in check should something go wrong. Bright Data, on the other hand, is fully covered and protected. The company has over 48 patents filed most of which are signed and approved. All of the data centers used by this proxy service are privately owned.

Any residential peer networks that it uses for its rotational IP service have all agreed to opt in to the service. You won’t face any major legal hurdles with Bright Data for scraping and collecting data or using their proxy services.

User Friendly

Bright Data has spent a lot of its time and resources to make sure that its service is accessible to everyone. The dashboard has a simple enough and easy-to-use interface that you can easily guide yourself around. If you do find yourself stumped, the service offers helpful tutorials that will make you understand how to use it no matter what your technical experience.

Fully Compatible

Aside from using the fully-fledged dashboard, you can also use Bright Data’s service without its GUI. The service allows you to use the code that you can integrate into your website or application easily. Bright Data offers APIs for all the major programming languages such as Shell, Node.js, Python, C#, Java, VB, PHP, Ruby, and Perl.

It also has an extension for Chrome, so you can use it right out of your browser without having to install anything. Additionally, you also get a link tester with the service, so you can test your links to see if they are working properly.

Pricing

Bright Data offers some of the most competitive pricing that you will find for any kind of rotational proxy service. They offer reasonable rates for their service with market competitive prices that can really help businesses take off. Bright Data offers both monthly plans and pay-as-you-go plans. It also seperates it plans based on the type of proxy.

You can pay for private proxies, shared proxies, and residential and mobile proxy. Prices are set at unit values so it’s easy to calculate your cost based on traffic and IPs. They charge $0.50 per GB of data and around $0.60 per IP. They have a dedicated tariff calculator that will sum up all your costs and display your price.

Customer Support

Bright Data offer excellent customer support for its product. You get 24/7 support across all kinds of different mediums. You can contact the team via their helpline number, live chat, support email, Skype, Twitter, WebQQ, or even visit their head office in person.

The response is generally quick ranging from anywhere from 3-10 minutes. You will also get connected with a knowledgeable technical staff some of whom are developers that helped design the service. You can also get in touch with the management or sales staff if you have any other kind of issues or queries. Overall, they’re generally quick and eager to help you out.

Our Verdict

Bright Data provides a great proxy service for businesses to be able to scrape data. With a host of useful features and a reliable network, it’s a no-brainer opting for this service. And on top of it all, they offer their services at some of the most reasonable rates. If you’re looking to scale up your business, this is the way to go.

The Ultimate Guide to Proxy Compatibility

MigdaliazStevensonc — Sat, 25 Sep 2021 07:29:30 +0000

The world of proxy connections can be quite complex when you’re getting into automating software and connections. It’s easy enough to use a proxy for web browsing, but what about using half a dozen proxies for running something like Scrapebox targeting Google, notorious for detecting bots and stopping them in their tracks?

You have to worry about perhaps a lot more than you might realize. Do you know the diﬀerence between SOCKS4 and SOCKS5? Do you know what ports are required to forward proxy traﬃc? Do you know what a residential IP means? Thankfully, you have me to go over it for you.

I’m often asked questions about individual pieces of software as well. “Does application X work with your proxies?” Generally, the answer is going to be yes, but I’d rather educate you about why that is than just have you blindly accept it. So, first, I’m going to cover different important factors you might encounter with proxies and what they mean, then I’m going to cover some of the most popular applications you might use with proxies, and what they require.

Things to Check

As I said, the first thing I’m going to do is go over the common aspects you might find when dealing with proxy connections and using them to do your bidding. Some of this might get a little technical, so if all you’re looking for is application compatibility, feel free to skip to the next section.

HTTP vs SOCKS4 vs SOCKS5

This is the first and possibly most important compatibility issue; the type of connection the proxy can use. SOCKS is the default kind of proxy connection. A proxy server using SOCKS sits in the middle, between a client and a server destination. For example, it would sit between you and Google if you were using something like Scrapebox. SOCKS itself stands for SOCKet Secure.

The diﬀerence between SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 is that SOCKS5 includes authentication. With a SOCKS4 proxy, there is no ability to use a login and password as a requirement to use it, or to use authentication information at the destination server. In other words, if you’re trying to scrape data on a page you need to log in to access, you need to use a SOCKS5 proxy server.

So what about HTTP? HTTP is more specialized, and thus more limited. You might recognize HTTP as the beginning of the common URL. That’s because it’s the common protocol used for standard web traﬃc.

SOCKS is a protocol used for server to server communication, and has no interpretation of the data; it just passes it from point A through point B and to point C unchanged.

HTTP connections at point B, however, have the chance to interpret and forward the traﬃc. This is useful to streamline some aspects of scraping. For example, if you were scraping Amazon traffic, an HTTP connection is capable of recognizing and caching common elements, to minimize what your scraper needs to download from Amazon itself.

That said, HTTP connections are limited to just HTTP communications. If you’re trying to access a server that does not allow HTTP connections, but your software requires you to use HTTP connections, you won’t be able to make the connection in the first place.

Ports Necessary for Communications

Ports are another part of internet communication that is both foundational and utterly ignored by most people unless they have a need to mess with them. They essentially act like radio channel frequencies or TV channels. Another analogy might be an apartment building; it as one street address, which is the IP address. The port would specify the apartment itself.

Different ports are often used to differentiate the service being used to make the connection.

Port 21 is typically used for FTP connections
port 22 is used for SSH connections
port 53 is used for DNS servicing
Port 80 is almost always used exclusively for HTTP communications, and that’s a limitation on proxies as well.

If your proxy only supports HTTP, it will be limited to port 80. If the proxy uses SOCKS, it can typically use any port, so you will have to tailor your port to the destination’s requirements.

Secure Transmission of Data

This is another concern you might have about a proxy server, but is unrelated to the SOCKS and Port factors above. It’s all about how secure the connection is through the proxy.

Many public proxies are not secure at all; they are routed through eastern European servers, which inject ads into the traffic or route it through an overlay. You never know what kind of software might be running on that server to snoop on the connections being made and data being sent.

By contrast, private proxies tend to have more security, because the proxy servers themselves are located in more secure locations.

They are also designed for more advanced users, users who would take umbrage to their data being snooped. You also might need a secure connection to access some websites, particularly websites through SCOKS5 that require authentication. Always avoid putting in sensitive login information to an unsecured proxy.

Anonymous or Not

The issue of anonymity is one that is central to the idea of proxy connections. Many people use proxies for simple web browsing because they don’t want their home IP address associated with their browsing habits. They might just not want to be tracked by large entities like Facebook, Google, or the big ad networks.

Alternatively, they might be doing something borderline illegal – or actually illegal – and want to hide from law enforcement or the NSA. This isn’t always possible, of course. Just look at the Silk Road, and all the users who thought they were safe before the FBI raided the place and arrested the worst oﬀenders. The false sense of security that comes from perceived anonymity, which itself comes from the idea that hiding behind a proxy makes you untraceable.

There are different levels of anonymity with proxies. Some of them will forward pretty much all the normal information you normally forward, and don’t actually provide you any anonymity at all. They would tell the destination server their IP address for access, but will say “by the way, my actual IP is , in case that matters.” It won’t, unless someone wants to track you, in which case they can find your real IP right there.

Higher levels of security don’t forward as much information. The next step up is called distorting proxies, and will not reveal your IP address, but WILL reveal that they are a proxy connection. The destination server will know someone is connecting through a proxy, but won’t know the originating IP address. The highest level of anonymity comes from top tier proxies that emulate real connections. These don’t even reveal that they are proxies, though sometimes user behaviors will give them away.

Capable of Passing Search Engine Blocks

This is a factor people refer to as “Google safe” for proxies, and all it means is that the IP address of the proxy is not known to be a proxy server, and has not been abused in the past. Google has aggressive anti-proxy and anti-bot measures in place, and will time out your connections if it detects abuse and botting.

A proxy being Google safe is not necessarily a factor of the proxy itself; it is often more a matter of user behaviors. If you’re making a lot of similar repeated requests from one IP address, it looks like a bot. If you’re varying the IP address for those requests, and varying the timing on them, it looks more like organic users. This is why you should use proxy lists rather than a singular proxy, and why you should set delays and asynchronous connections.

IP Location

This final factor is just a matter of where the proxy server is coming from. There are two main categories for this.

The first category is geographic. If you’re trying to log into a US-centric website, it’s probably not a good idea to use a proxy server located in the Ukraine. A lot of sites commonly targeted by scrapers will block foreign IPs, or re-route them to foreign versions of the site; not valuable to your needs.

The other category is used. Does the IP come from a data center, or does it come from a residential neighborhood? This is possibly the most important factor on this list. Many large entities, like Google, Amazon and E-commercial websites, will detect when a connection is being made from a data center. It’s one of the ways they can detect proxy and scraper abuse. It’s always better to be coming in from a residential IP location because it’s more like their typical user behavior.

Apps and Their Compatibility

There are a bunch of common apps or pieces of software you might want to use with proxies. They usually scrape data automatically in some form, though others will submit data in bulk. Usually, sites don’t like robots making these kinds of actions, because it’s how spam and fake accounts come about. I’m not here to judge you on your usage; I’m sure you know what you’re doing.

I also take no responsibility for how you choose to use proxies. All I’m doing is reviewing common programs and telling you their requirements. As a disclaimer, I do not necessarily support or condone black hat usage of the following applications; what you do is up to you.

Scrapebox

Possibly one of the most powerful tools used in both black and white hat operations, this is an incredibly robust data harvester. It’s used equally by black hat SEOs and top Fortune 500 companies. Multithreaded operations support numerous connections, and it is Google-safe as long as you’re using it properly. It is, of course, possible to be banned according to your usage. That’s why you need numerous proxies, asynchronous and varied requests, and delays on submissions. Use with caution.

Supports both HTTP and SOCKS connections.
Supports both private and public proxies, though private proxies are preferred.
Highly recommended that you use a large, rotating list of proxies rather than a short, static list.

XRumer

This is another link building SEO application that primarily focuses on web forums with some residual value. It also targets blog comments, journal guestbooks, link directories, social networks, social bookmarking sites, and more. It includes captcha bypassing for a number of common systems, including the textual Q&A systems. To avoid spam labels, it tries to customize posts according to the theme of the forum or board being targeted.

Supports both HTTP and SOCKS connections.
Prefers private proxies to avoid trying to use previously banned IP addresses.

SEnuke TNG

SEnuke TNG is an older program designed for SEO, which was used as the base for SEnukeX, a more advanced version. This new version was created from the ground up to include more features, including a basic tutorial, a process diagram, and scheduling out for weeks. It strives to stay on the good side of Google, by appearing as natural as possible. The application has a 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Requires HTTP connections exclusively.
Prefers private proxies to avoid common issues with public proxy servers.

Tweet Attacks

Tweet Attacks Pro 4, the current version of Tweet Attacks, is a piece of software made to manage as many as several thousand Twitter accounts at any given time. It allows automatic follows, unfollows, return follows, tweets, retweets, replies, likes, deletes, and really any other action you could want to take through Twitter. IT also allows individual customization of those Twitter accounts, to eliminate the “egg” problem when running networks of simulated accounts. Costs vary depending on the tier of program you prefer.

Requires HTTP connections exclusively, due to Twitter’s authentication requirements.
Supports both private and public proxies, though private proxies are preferred to avoid detection.
Recommended that you use numerous proxies to manage your accounts, though you don’t need to go so far as to have a dedicated proxy for every account.

Ticketmaster

This is a general category for any number of different Ticketmaster ticket-buying bots. There are a wide range of them, including one named TicketMaster, the TicketMaster Spinner, and TicketBots. All of these have their requirements in common, because they access the same site with the same goal; buying numerous tickets to shows to then re-sell the tickets for a profit. This sort of ticket scalping is not illegal unless done physically on the premises of the venue. Some states may have stricter laws regarding ticket resales, however.

Requires HTTP connections to the Ticketmaster website for authentication and appearance purposes.
Residential IP addresses preferred, as Ticketmaster is prone to revoking sales made to data center IPs and other non-native IPs that signal a bot.

Twitter Account Creation

For using bots like the Twitter manager above, you need to mass-create Twitter accounts. There are a number of different bots that allow this, such as Twitter Mass Account Maker or Twitter Account Creator Bot. Like Ticketmaster bots, these all have similar requirements.

Requires an HTTP connection for authenticity and login authentication to Twitter’s servers.
Prefers residential IP addresses, usually private rather than public, though the occasional data center IP is not unexpected due to Twitter’s agency and corporate usage.

Facebook Account Creation

This is the same in many ways as the Twitter bots listed above. Some common Facebook account bots include Facebook Account Creator and FBDevil.

Requires HTTP connection for authenticity and login authentication to Facebook’s servers.
Prefers residential IP addresses, and typically prefers private over public addresses.

Email Account Creation

Email accounts are capable of being created in bulk much the same way as social profiles, though there are as many different bots as there are email providers. Every provider is diﬀerent and every bot is diﬀerent, so make sure the requirements are met before you buy or use a proxy list.

Typically the requirements will be the same as the social requirements above: HTTP connections and residential IPs. Some email systems are okay with other connections or with datacenter IPs, though.

Playwright Vs. Puppeteer Vs. Selenium: What are the differences?

MigdaliazStevensonc — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 06:12:10 +0000

There are many web browser automation tools you can use for free, with Selenium, Playwright, and Puppeteer being some of the most popular. This article will discuss the differences between Playwright, Puppeteer, and Selenium.

Automating web browsers brings about a lot of opportunities to the developer’s community, and today modern web applications can be tested via automated testing, web forms can be filled, Ajaxified websites crawled and scraped, and even purchase automated, among other tasks.

The whole idea of automating web browsers has not been around since the inception of the web, and many web services are not even in support of it. However, the coming around of Selenium in 2004 has revolutionized the web browser automation field. Interestingly, other tools joined, including Playwright and Puppeteer, all coming with their unique twists.

As a developer looking forward to automated web browsers, you will have to make a choice and choose the best one for your project. Without knowing about the options available to you, you might end up using a tool with a better alternative. It is for this reason that this article has been written. In this article, we are going to be discussing the popular web browser automation tools you can use to automate your tasks online.

Overview: Browser Automation Tools

When making a choice in things like this, it is a matter of trade-off, personal preference, and language you are more comfortable with. But there are also some advantages some have that others do not.

But in all, the trio – Playwright, Puppeteer, and Selenium are meant for testing modern web applications -and other forms of automation such as web scraping, tasks automation, and even screenshot taking, among others. Let take a look at an overview of each of the tools.

Selenium

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FUdrBq-WFo It can be argued that Selenium is the de facto web browser control and driver. It is the most popular tool for web browser automation and not specific to any browser, operating system, or programming language. Selenium is so versatile and popular that you will hardly see a developer that had done browser automation before without knowing about it.

According to the information on the Selenium website, it automates web browsers and what you do with that is up to you. While Selenium works, it is resource-heavy, can be unreliable in certain scenarios, and could fail without any obvious reason. These had led to the development of other alternatives.

Puppeteer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxQY3Vi_COg Puppeteer is Google’s response to some of the shortcomings of Selenium. Puppeteer is the brainchild of the Chrome DevTools team. Puppeteer is a Node library that provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. The advantage Puppeteer has over Selenium is that when you’re installing, a compatible version of Chromium is installed. This does away with issues of browser installing upgrade that leads to Puppeteer incompatibility.

Another advantage Puppeteer has over Selenium is that it interfaces well with Chrome and Chromium as it controls it via the DevTools Protocol. This is different from Selenium that controls browsers via WebDriver Protocol that acts as an intermediary between the Selenium and the browser.

Playwright

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_BPIA5RgXU Playwright is the most recent of the 3 browser automation tools. With Playwright, you can reliably test modern web applications across all modern browsers. Playwright has support for Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit, unlike Puppeteer that has support for only Chrome. Interestingly, you will be using the same API to interact with the different browsers. Some of the things you will also come to like about Playwright is that it intercepts network activities, run multi-page emulation scenarios, and comes with a reliable auto-wait feature.

Playwright is also very simple to use, and you can get started with it in no time. Also, important for you to know about Playwright is that it was developed by Microsoft. And as such, it equally has strong institutional backing like Google. Both Playwright and Puppeteer are simple. This is partly because some of the top contributors to Puppeteer moved to work on the Playwright project.

Platform, Browser, and Language Support

Another very important aspect of these tools that gives you a better understanding of the differences between them is the web browser they support and the programming language you can use in scripting them. Generally, going the more language and browser supported, the more versatile a certain tool becomes. Let take a look at how each of them stands.

Playwright

When it comes to browser and language support, Playwright is one of the best. With Playwright, you can automate many web browsers. This library has full API coverage for all modern browsers, including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari. For each of the browsers, it has support for both headless and headful mode, which the former not having UI and the latter operating with a full UI.

Usually, headless mode is the standard as it requires less memory and runs faster. However, you will need the headful mode for the UI for debugging. You can even use it to test the mobile responsiveness of a site.

Playwright is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. In terms of programming language support, Playwright API is available in multiple programming languages, including Python, Typescript, JavaScript, C#, and Go. Support for Java is on the way.

Puppeteer

Puppeteer is cross-platform, and you can use it on Windows, Mac, and Linux. However, that’s where the versatility ends. It has been developed for and only Chromium and Chrome. If you are looking to automate other web browsers, then you will need to look elsewhere as Puppeteer is not the browser controller for you.

Another downside you will need to consider is its language support. Puppeteer is a Node library and only available to JavaScript developers. Unlike Playwright that supports a number of languages, Puppeteer supports only one.

While you might see the lack of support for other browsers as a minus, you will discover that Puppeteer's specialization makes it one of the best among them. It comes from the same team behind the development of the most popular browser (Chrome) and simply interfaces with it in ways others cannot.

Selenium

The oldest among them all has been a jack of all trade – it has support for many programming languages, browsers, and platforms – just like Playwright. Selenium has support for Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Opera. In terms of operating system support, Selenium has got Windows, Linux, and Mac supported.

Its language support is unrivaled, not even by Playwright that supports multiple programming languages. The main Selenium project on GitHub has support for Java, Python, Ruby, C#, and JavaScript. Other language bindings exist. These include Go, Haskell, PHP, Perl, R, and Dart.

Interfacing Method

One of the key features that differentiate the 3 tools is how they interface with the browsers they control. It might interest you to know that while they achieve the same result, how they get it done is quite different. Let take a look at how each connects and controls browsers it supports.

Playwright and Puppeteer

The Playwright and Puppeteer libraries are quite similar in the way the interface and control browsers. Again, from the overview section, you will discover that there are many similarities between the two projects – and the interfacing aspect is one of such. These two browser automation libraries automate browsers via the DevTools protocol.

You can see this as the libraries talking to the browser directly. Using this protocol, these tools can listen to browser events, access network events and console logs, get details of DOMs, and even give commands.

Selenium

Unlike the other two libraries discussed above, Selenium does not interface with browsers via the developer’s tool protocol. They follow a completely different approach. Instead of the DevTools protocol, Selenium interfaces with browsers via WebDriver protocol. For each of the browsers supported, there is a WebDriver protocol for it.

For Chrome, there is the ChromeDriver, Safari uses the Safaridriver, and Firefox uses the Geckodriver. One thing you need to know about this WebDriver protocol is that you will need to install the specific one for the version of your browser. Also, you will need to download it and reference it from your script or app. This adds some level of complexity.

Playwright, Puppeteer, and Selenium: Which Should You Use

Looking at the 3 options, you will discover that there is no much difference between them except in how the interface with browsers, their platform/browser support, as well as execution speed, and a few others. If you have to head the above well, you will discover that the major issue Selenium has is in the process of installation and the fact that its execution speed is slow when compared to the others.

Aside from these issues, it is best when you consider other factors, including cross-platform and browser support. On the other hand, Playwright is also cross-platform and supports many browsers – this makes it a strong Selenium contender. Its API is also quite simple and easy to use than that of Selenium.

The playwright is equally more modern, and as such, our recommendation tilts towards Playwright except if your preferred language or browser is not supported by Playwright. If you are developing using Node and want to automate Chrome, then Puppeteer is the option.

Because both Puppeteer and Playwright have the same lead developers, APIs, and other similarities, it is easy to switch from one to another, unlike Selenium, which is completely new. Another thing you need to know is that Playwright is more feature-rich than Puppeteer.

Source: https://www.bestproxyreviews.com/playwright-vs-puppeteer-vs-selenium/

Proxy Vs. VPN

MigdaliazStevensonc — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 07:26:27 +0000

The Internet is a magical place that consists of a plethora of things to explore. There are many terminologies that you might be aware of but not quite understand, and proxies are one of them. You might have heard about the proxies as an essential thing that goes on the internet.

But you’re not sure what exactly proxies are? Here we'll explain proxies and their functionality in comparison with VPNs, and that too, in layman terms. This is the time to clear your concepts regarding the proxies and the VPN as they are one of the essential things on the internet. Basic knowledge about these two concepts will also help you choose between the two as per your requirements.

What are proxies?

Proxies act as middlemen between the people and the internet or between two computers and they help you hide your IP address from the servers too. These proxies are mostly used to provide anonymity to the person using them as they don’t reveal the internet traffic activities. Proxies thus allow utilizing the internet in many ways because there is no danger of data interpretation. When the proxies mask your IP address, it feels like the internet activities performed by you are coming from some other location and this way tracking gets impossible.

For example, if you're located in Canada, and you want to access a website that allows only the German residents to view it, you can easily connect to a proxy server located in Germany, and then use the site. The internet traffic habits from your website will appear from a computer in Germany and not from yours in Canada. Since proxies act as web filters, they offer a great way to do less risky tasks such as watching YouTube videos that have geological restrictions, operating behind the firewall, and bypassing different content filters on the web.

These proxies also help gaming enthusiasts to improve their ranking by playing online games. Some games have a classification based on the votes system, and the vote can be cast once for a particular IP address only. If you want to cast more votes, you can log on from different proxy servers and act as different persons casting votes. There are two main types of proxies that are discussed as follows:

HTTP proxies:

The HTTP proxies are most commonly used on the web, and they are mostly used for performing primary web surfing activities on the internet. These proxies are designed mainly for the web browsing and all the traffic related to it. You enter the web address, and HTTP client connects you to the HTTP server. So, HTTP proxies are used to share the data between the client and the server. The HTTP client sends a request message to the HTTP server which in turn sends a response message in the form of text, picture, video, audio, or even an error message.

Socks proxies:

Socks proxies are more secure than HTTP proxies as they are not smart and can't interpret the data that is passing through them. HTTP proxies handle the web traffic only, and they can read the data and understand it. Socks proxies use the tunneling method for transferring the data which doesn’t allow penetration. Socks proxies are very secure and thus can be used for performing highly confidential activities on the web. There are variants of socks proxies such as socks4 and socks5 which can be used according to the level of security you need.

VPN:

Virtual Private Network is a protocol that also works similar to the proxies when it comes to hiding the IP address or making it appear from a remote location. While proxies act as middlemen, VPNs establish a connection with the server in a secure form. The VPN connections capture the network of the whole system and thus manage the traffic of everything such as the applications and browser. However, to access the VPN, you must be using WiFi. Using a VPN adds an extra layer of security and lets you use those websites that are restricted in your region, or there is a firewall that is stopping you from viewing a site. When you connect to a VPN, all the things in your system automatically conform to it and get protected.

Difference between Proxies and VPN:

Though proxies and VPN have a similar function, they have some gaps which need to be addressed if you want to choose one of them. To get a clear concept of proxies versus VPNs, have a look at the following table:

	Security	Protocols used	Works on	Speed
Proxy	For basic privacy	HTTP, FTP, Socks, TELNET, SMTP	Browsers	High
VPN	High	PTTP, L2TP, IPsec	Firewall	Slight drop

Proxies and VPNs differ in some regards that can be seen from the table above. If you’re still confused about which one to choose, read the following sections:

Why use proxies at all?

Proxies offer privacy by protecting the web traffic that is sent between the client and the server. This means that the IP address is masked from any other location and the website will be able to view only the IP address of the proxy server and not yours. Proxies can be used as a temporary solution for getting necessary privacy protection while you're browsing the web. When security and privacy are not significant concerns, and all you want to do are low-stakes tasks, you can use proxies without any fear.

However, while you're using proxies, you must make sure that you're getting the service from premium service providers. Proxies can be used for performing the following functions:

Getting basic online privacy
Bypassing censorship
Bypassing geological restrictions
Avoiding search engine query logging

The biggest drawback that proxies have is that they don’t encrypt the data; they hide the IP address. Socks proxies are very secure as they aren’t smart and can’t understand the data, and thus they can be used for performing private activities on the web as explained earlier.

Proxies overall offer a good solution for hiding the identity for doing simple tasks which do not need more security and safety. If you are getting the proxy services from a trustworthy and professional company, you don't have to worry about your data being accessed. We advise our readers to always go through the fine print so that any mishap is avoided. It is imperative to read the terms and conditions of a particular service provider.

Some proxy providers allow logging of data which can cause a threat to your privacy. If you want to prevent such logging, you must go for the providers that don’t allow such activities. The best usage of proxies, particularly socks proxies is for data scraping. The socks proxies also provide encryption of data unlike the HTTP proxies and they support UDP too.

Why use VPNs at all?

VPN is used for making your identity completely anonymous. These protocols provide complete anonymity, unlike the proxies which can allow penetration or tracing of data. A VPN can be used any internet connection such as WiFi and public hotspots as it adds an extra layer of security to the connection you're using.

Since the data is encrypted, an attacker won’t be able to access it even if he/she manages to breach the privacy. The tunnel through which the data passes is highly encrypted and thus allows no penetration. However, with VPNs to you have to be very careful before choosing a service provider. VPN is an excellent tool that provides privacy and anonymity, and there are many benefits to using it. VPNs can be used to perform the following functions:

WiFi Hotspot Security
Avoiding search engine query logging
Adding an extra layer to online privacy
Bypassing geological restrictions
Bypassing censorship
Security and privacy for VoIP
Avoiding bandwidth throttling

You can prevent bandwidth throttling by using VPN. Bandwidth throttling can reduce the speed and can cause much nuisance. Unfortunately, many service providers do this especially when users do torrent downloading. The ISP slows down the internet connection after analyzing your data, and you may not get the speed for which you're paying the service provider. In such situations, VPNs are very helpful as they prevent such bandwidth throttling. Also, when you use a public hotspot, it is quite dangerous as it can breach your privacy and thus VPN is used to add an extra layer of security to it.

Conclusion:

Whether you want to choose proxies or VPN, there are advantages and disadvantages to both types of protocols. If you wish to obtain high security and safety, you can use the socks proxies along with a strong VPN connection and then use them alternatively or simultaneously according to your requirements. In short, proxies are a good choice if you want to perform the necessary tasks that your IP doesn't allow you to do usually, for example, bypassing geological restrictions or accessing restricted web content due to the firewall. VPNs add a security layer to your internet connection and encrypt the data and thus offer complete anonymity to the user.

How to scrape HTML from a website Using Javascript?

MigdaliazStevensonc — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 08:22:10 +0000

Do you plan to scrape websites using JavaScript? With the help of the Node.js platform and its associated libraries, you can use JavaScript to develop web scrapers that can scrape data from any website you like.

We are in an era where businesses depend largely on data, and the Internet is a huge source of data with textual data being the most important. Social and business researchers are interested in collecting data from websites that have data of interest to them. Unfortunately, most websites do not make it easy for data scientists to collect the required data. For this reason, researchers have to use automated means to collect these data on their own. This automated means of collecting publicly accessible data on web pages using web scrapers is known as web scraping.

Web scrapers can be developed using any programming language that is Turing complete. Java, PHP, Python, JavaScript, C/C++, and C#, among others, have been used for writing web scrapers. Being that as it may, some languages are much more popular than others as far as developing web scrapers are concerned. JavaScript is not a popular choice. In recent times, its popularity as a language for developing web scrapers is on the rise – thanks to the availability of web scraping libraries. In this article, I will be showing you how to develop web scrapers using JavaScript.

Node.js – The Game Changer

JavaScript was originally developed for frontend web development to add interactivity and responsiveness to web pages. Outside of a browser, JavaScript cannot run. For this reason, you cannot use it for backend development as you can use the likes of Python, Java, and C++. This then means that you will need to be proficient in two languages to be able to do both frontend and backend development. However, Developers thought that JavaScript is a complete programming language and, as such, shouldn’t be confined to only the browser environment. This led Ryan Dahl to develop Node.js. Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript Engine. With Node.js, you can write codes and get them to run on PCs and servers, just like PHP, Java, and Python. This now made many developers take JavaScript as a complete language to be taken seriously – and many libraries and frameworks were developed for it to make programming backend using JavaScript easily. With Node.js, you can now use one language to write codes for both frontend and backend.

As a JavaScript developer, you can develop a complete web scraper using JavaScript, and you will use Node.js to run it. I will show you how to code a web scraper using JavaScript and some Node.js libraries.

Installations and Setup

Unlike the JavaScript runtime that comes installed in every modern browser, you will need to install Node.js for you to use it for your development. You can install Node.js from the Node.js official website – file size is less than 20MB for Windows users. After installing Node.js, you can enter the below code in your command line to see if it has been installed successfully.

Node

if no error message is returned, then Node has been installed successfully. You can also confirm by looking out for the Node.js application in your list of installed programs. After installation, the next step is to install the necessary libraries/modules for web scraping. For this tutorial, I will advise you to create a new folder in your desktop and name it web scraping. Then launch Command Prompt (MS-DOS/ command line) and navigate to the folder using the command below.

cd desktop/web scraper

Now, let start installing the Node.js packages for web scraper – don’t close Command Prompt yet.

Axios

The Axios module is one of the most important web scraping libraries. It is an HTTP Client, just like a browser that sends web requests and gets back a response for you. You will be using it to download pages you want to scrape data from. To installAxios, use the code below.

npm install axios

Cheerio

Cheerio is a lightweight library you can use to transverse the DOM of the HTML page downloaded using Axios for the purpose of collecting the required data. Its syntax is like that of jQuery, and as such, you will have no problem using it if you already know how to make use of jQuery. Use the below command to install it.

npm install request

Puppeteer

If you are scraping from static pages, the libraries above will do the work. However, when you intend to scrape from pages that its contents are dynamically generated and depend on JavaScript evens to load, then Axios isn’t useful as it only downloads what the server sends to it when it initials a request. For dynamic websites that depend on JavaScript events to load content, you will need a browser automation tool to help you control a browser so that all contents will load,and then you can scrape them.

npm install puppeteer

Scraping from Static Websites

Scraping from static web pages is the easiest – when we are not putting anti-scraping systems into consideration. This is because, for static web pages, all that is required is for you to use an HTTP Client (Axios) to request for the content of a page, the website’s server will send back a response as HTML. You can then make use of Cheerio to transverse the DOM and scrape the required data. In the example below, I use JavaScript to scrape the text within the h1 tag from https://example.com/. In the code below, I use Axiosto download the whole page and then Cheerio for collecting traversing the DOM and scraping the text within the h1 tag.

constaxios = require("axios")

const cheerio = require("cheerio")

async function fetchHTML(url) {

const{ data } = await axios.get(url)

  return cheerio.load(data)

}

const $ = await fetchHTML("https://example.com")

// Print the full HTML

console.log(`Site HTML: ${$.html()}\n\n`)

// Print some specific page content

console.log(`First h1 tag: ${$('h1').text()}`)

Scraping Dynamic Websites

Dynamic websites pose a serious challenge to web scraper. Websites on the Internet were initially developed as static websites with little to no form of interactivity. For these websites, when you send a request for a page, all the content for that page is loaded at ones – this is the model that is easiest for web scrapers to scrape. However, with the advent of dynamic websites, many pages on the Internet do not get their content loaded at ones. Some of the content depends on JavaScript events. If you are posed with scraping a website like this, you will need to use Puppeteer.

What Puppeteer does is that it controls Chrome to visit the website, trigger the JavaScript events that will load content, and then when content is loaded, you can then scrape the required data out. There is a lot you can do with Puppeteer. In the below example, the code scrapes the title and summary of the Fast Five movies from IMDb. There is more you can do with Puppeteer; read the Puppeteer documentation here to learn more about its APIs and usage.

const puppeteer = require("puppeteer");

async function collectData() {

const browser = await puppeteer.launch();

const page = await browser.newPage();

  await page.goto

("https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1013752/");

const data = await page.evaluate(() => {

const title = document.querySelector(

      "#title-overview-widget >div.vital>

div.title_block> div >div.titleBar>

div.title_wrapper> h1"

).innerText;

const summary = document.querySelector(

      "#title-overview-widget >

div.plot_summary_wrapper>div.plot_summary>

div.summary_text"

).innerText;

    // This object will be stored in the data variable

    return {

      title,

      summary,

    };

  });

  await browser.close();

}

collectData();

A Note About Anti-Scraping Techniques

Looking at the codes above, I didn’t incorporate techniques to bypass anti-bot systems. This is because the tutorial is minimalistic and a proof of concept. In reality, if you develop your own web scrapers and do not put into consideration anti-scraper systems, your bot will be blocked after a few hundred requests. This is because websites do not want to be scrapped as it adds no value to them – instead, it adds to their running cost. For this reason, they put in place anti-scraping systems to discourage web scraping and other forms of automated access.

The most popular anti-scraping techniques used by websites include IP tracking and block, and Captcha systems. Some websites use cookies, local storage, and browser fingerprinting to prevent bot traffic too. So, I will advise you to read the Axion documentation in order to learn how to use proxies, change user-agent string, and other headers, as well as rotate them.For a more comprehensive article on how to evade blocks, read this article – How to Scrape Websites and Never Get Blocked.

Conclusion

With the development of Node.js, it is time for everyone that has looked down on JavaScript to know that JavaScript is like every other programming language. Unlike in the past, you can now develop web scraper in JavaScript that requires no browser to run – it will run on a server or your local PC with the help of Node. Node goes crape any website you like with the help of JavaScript, Node.js, proxies, and anti-Captcha systems.