How to set up a proxy for Scrapy

Why a proxy is needed for Scrapy

While scraping is not considered illegal, many sites do not allow such activity. When you scrape large amounts of information with Scrapy, the security systems of Google and other web resources can track it and block your IP address.

A proxy will quickly solve this problem. After setting up a proxy server, you can hide your IP address and replace it with other addresses. Then Scrapy's actions will look like several people from different parts of the world are visiting the sites at once. This will protect you from blocking and regional restrictions.

Scrapy supports Socks5 and HTTP proxies. If you have already purchased reliable personal proxies, let's move on to set them up.

Setting up a proxy for Scrapy

There are two ways to set up an IP-rotating proxy in Scrapy.

Method 1: Through query parameters

It is required to write the proxy as a parameter.

    1. Open Scrapy.

    2. In the code, find the middleware called HttpProxyMiddleware.

    3. Next to "meta", enter your proxy server details.

Method 2: Through your middleware

In this way, you should create your middleware. This method is more isolated and secure.

    1. Open the program.

    2. Enter this code with your proxy data.

    3. Make sure you enable this middleware in settings and put it before HttpProxyMiddleware.

How to check if a proxy is working in Scrapy

To check if you have configured the proxy correctly, you can scrape any site that determines the IP address. Finding such sites is easy, just search for "What is my IP address", or "Test IP address". If you did everything correctly, as a result, you would see the address of your proxy server.

Done! You have successfully set up a proxy for Scrapy.