Best Practices for Building a Web Scraper: What Should I Know Before Starting?

Hey everyone! 👋

So, I’m thinking about building a scraper for a side project, but I’m kinda new to this whole thing. I’ve heard there’s a lot to consider before diving in, like legality, ethics, and not getting blocked by websites lol.

What are some best practices I should know? Like, how do I make sure my scraper isn’t too aggressive and doesn’t crash a site? Also, any tips on handling dynamic content or avoiding CAPTCHAs?

Oh, and what tools/libraries do y’all recommend for building a scraper? I’ve heard of BeautifulSoup and Scrapy, but idk which one’s better for a beginner.

Any advice or “wish I knew this earlier” moments would be super helpful! Thanks in advance! 🙌

(Also, pls no hate if this has been asked a million times already 😅)