Proxy Management

import ApiLink from '@site/src/components/ApiLink';

import Tabs from '@theme/Tabs'; import TabItem from '@theme/TabItem'; import CodeBlock from '@theme/CodeBlock';

import HttpSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_integration_http.ts'; import JSDOMSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_integration_jsdom.ts'; import CheerioSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_integration_cheerio.ts'; import PlaywrightSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_integration_playwright.ts'; import PuppeteerSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_integration_puppeteer.ts'; import SessionStandaloneSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_session_standalone.ts'; import SessionHttpSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_session_http.ts'; import SessionJSDOMSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_session_jsdom.ts'; import SessionCheerioSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_session_cheerio.ts'; import SessionPlaywrightSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_session_playwright.ts'; import SessionPuppeteerSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_session_puppeteer.ts'; import InspectionHttpSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_inspection_http.ts'; import InspectionJSDOMSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_inspection_jsdom.ts'; import InspectionCheerioSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_inspection_cheerio.ts'; import InspectionPlaywrightSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_inspection_playwright.ts'; import InspectionPuppeteerSource from '!!raw-loader!./proxy_management_inspection_puppeteer.ts';

IP address blocking is one of the oldest and most effective ways of preventing access to a website. It is therefore paramount for a good web scraping library to provide easy to use but powerful tools which can work around IP blocking. The most powerful weapon in our anti IP blocking arsenal is a proxy server.

With Crawlee we can use our own proxy servers or proxy servers acquired from third-party providers.

Check out the avoid blocking guide for more information about blocking.

Quick start

If we already have proxy URLs of our own, we can start using them immediately in only a few lines of code.

import { ProxyConfiguration } from 'crawlee';

const proxyConfiguration = new ProxyConfiguration({
    proxyUrls: [
        'http://proxy-1.com',
        'http://proxy-2.com',
    ]
});
const proxyUrl = await proxyConfiguration.newUrl();

Examples of how to use our proxy URLs with crawlers are shown below in Crawler integration section.

Proxy Configuration

All our proxy needs are managed by the <ApiLink to="core/class/ProxyConfiguration">ProxyConfiguration</ApiLink> class. We create an instance using the ProxyConfiguration <ApiLink to="core/class/ProxyConfiguration#constructor">constructor</ApiLink> function based on the provided options. See the <ApiLink to="core/interface/ProxyConfigurationOptions">ProxyConfigurationOptions</ApiLink> for all the possible constructor options.

Crawler integration

ProxyConfiguration integrates seamlessly into <ApiLink to="http-crawler/class/HttpCrawler">HttpCrawler</ApiLink>, <ApiLink to="cheerio-crawler/class/CheerioCrawler">CheerioCrawler</ApiLink>, <ApiLink to="jsdom-crawler/class/JSDOMCrawler">JSDOMCrawler</ApiLink>, <ApiLink to="playwright-crawler/class/PlaywrightCrawler">PlaywrightCrawler</ApiLink> and <ApiLink to="puppeteer-crawler/class/PuppeteerCrawler">PuppeteerCrawler</ApiLink>.

Our crawlers will now use the selected proxies for all connections.

IP Rotation and session management

​<ApiLink to="core/class/ProxyConfiguration#newUrl">proxyConfiguration.newUrl()</ApiLink> allows us to pass a sessionId parameter. It will then be used to create a sessionId-proxyUrl pair, and subsequent newUrl() calls with the same sessionId will always return the same proxyUrl. This is extremely useful in scraping, because we want to create the impression of a real user. See the session management guide and <ApiLink to="core/class/SessionPool">SessionPool</ApiLink> class for more information on how keeping a real session helps us avoid blocking.

When no sessionId is provided, our proxy URLs are rotated round-robin.

Inspecting current proxy in Crawlers

HttpCrawler, CheerioCrawler, JSDOMCrawler, PlaywrightCrawler and PuppeteerCrawler grant access to information about the currently used proxy in their requestHandler using a <ApiLink to="core/interface/ProxyInfo">proxyInfo</ApiLink> object. With the proxyInfo object, we can easily access the proxy URL.