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Python Apify Scrapy

Open Source Web Scraping Tools

A collection of high-performance web scraping actors and tools contributed to the Apify platform and open source community

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Client

Open Source Community

Role

Apify Ambassador / Maintainer

Timeline

Ongoing

Tech Stack

PythonApifyScrapy
Open Source Scraping Tools

Open Source Web Scraping Tools

Project Overview

As an Apify Ambassador for Nepal, I actively contribute to the web scraping ecosystem by building and maintaining high-performance actors (scrapers) that help developers and businesses extract data from complex websites. My open-source contributions focus on reliability, scalability, and ease of use.

The Challenge

The web scraping landscape is constantly changing. Developers often struggle with:

  • Anti-bot protections (Cloudflare, Akamai)
  • Dynamic content rendering
  • IP blocking and rate limiting
  • Maintenance of scraping logic as site structures change

Technical Solution

I have developed a suite of robust scraping tools and actors housed on the Apify platform:

Key Contributions

  1. Universal E-commerce Scraper

    • A highly configurable scraper capable of extracting product data from Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento based sites.
    • Features: Automatic pagination, schema.org extraction, and proxy rotation.

  2. Social Media Monitor

    • A specialized tool for tracking public posts and engagement metrics.
    • Uses hidden APIs to retrieve data efficiently without full browser rendering.

  3. Real Estate Data Extractor

    • Designed for scraping property listings with detailed metadata (price, amenities, location).
    • Implements intelligent retry logic and geo-targeting capabilities.

Technologies Used

  • Platform: Apify (Serverless Docker containers)
  • Languages: Python (Scrapy, Playwright), Node.js (Crawlee)
  • Tools: Git, Docker, GitHub Actions for CI/CD
  • Proxy Management: Residential & Datacenter proxies

Community Impact

  • 500+ Developers using my actors monthly
  • 50k+ Successful actor runs
  • Top Rated developer on the Apify Store
  • Active mentorship in the Apify Discord community

Technical Highlights

Resilient Request Handling

# Example of handling complex anti-bot challenges
async def handle_challenge(page):
    try:
        # Wait for potential Cloudflare challenge
        await page.wait_for_selector('iframe[src*="cloudflare"]', timeout=5000)
        await page.solve_recaptchas()
    except TimeoutError:
        pass # No challenge detected


    # Intelligent scroll to trigger lazy loading
    await auto_scroll(page)

Future Roadmap

I am committed to expanding this toolkit by:

  • Adding AI-driven parsing using LLMs to adapt to layout changes automatically.
  • Creating more educational content and tutorials for aspiring web scrapers.

This ongoing initiative allows me to give back to the community while staying at the cutting edge of web automation technologies.

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