When you use a proxy, you do not directly connect to the target server; instead, you direct your request to the proxy server that evaluates it and returns a response. Proxies have many benefits, such as they hide your real IP addresses, bypassing filters, censorship, etc.
A proxy rotator can help you get around most of the anti-scraping measures. You can also use it to sidestep any rate limits implemented on the target website and extract data successfully. But what is a rotating proxy? It is a proxy that assigns a new IP address for every connection from the proxy pool. It means you can send 1000 requests to any number of websites by launching a script and getting 1000 different IP addresses.
This article helps you to understand how to use proxies to rotate IP addresses in python.
You must import the Python’s requests module using the command below.
import requestsIf the module is not installed in your environment, you can install it using the below command.
!pip install requestsdef send_request(session, proxy):
try:
response = session.get('http://httpbin.org/ip', proxies={'http': f"http://{proxy}"})
print(response.json())
except:
passHere comes the main section of the code. You have to read your list_proxy.txt file and save it to the variable named proxies as shown below.
if __name__ == "__main__":
with open('list_proxy.txt', 'r') as file:
proxies = file.readlines()You have to use the requests module to create a session in Python. We used a for loop to loop through the proxy in the code below. We then passed the session and the proxy to the send_request function.
with requests.Session() as session:
for proxy in proxies:
send_request(session, proxy)You can run the script and see the output as shown below. You will get a long list of proxies but remember, they won’t work.
python rotateproxy.pyYour whole code will be as:
import requests
def send_request(session, proxy):
try:
response = session.get('http://httpbin.org/ip', proxies={'http': f"http://{proxy}"})
print(response.json())
except:
pass
if __name__ == "__main__":
with open('list_proxy.txt', 'r') as file:
proxies = file.readlines()
with requests.Session() as session:
for proxy in proxies:
send_request(session, proxy)Given below are some tips to rotate proxies in Python when using a rotating proxy.
Most of the available free proxy services are congested, which leads to unexpected crashes and frustrating delays. Therefore, when you plan to go for free proxies, you have to check if they match your scraping needs without causing any significant drawdowns.
Most free proxies are valid for a limited time, so you can build your own logic in Python that can rotate the free proxy list rotator with working IP addresses. This way, you won’t get any disruptions during web scraping.
You have to avoid using IP addresses that follow a particular sequence or a predictable format like belonging to the same group. It is because most anti-scraping tools can easily detect the requests sent from such IP addresses. For instance, you should abstain from using the following sequence of rotating IP addresses as it will quickly raise the red flag.
103.243.132.11
103.243.132.12
103.243.132.13
103.243.132.14
The free proxy IP rotators are insecure and slow. So, using them will not be suitable if you perform advanced and large-scale web scraping projects. Using good premium proxies, you can get a high-quality service and scrape thousands of web pages without experiencing blockades or disruptions.
To use a premium proxy service, you will have to pay a few dollars and get a provider that will meet your data extraction needs and guarantee your privacy.
Given below are three main categories of proxies on the Internet.
You can use IP rotation for rotating multiple IP addresses and avoiding detection. However, some anti-scraping measures can identify such activities and block you from harvesting data. Therefore, you also need to rotate user agents apart from rotating IP addresses to increase your chances of success.