Monitor Your Web Data Like a Pro with this Open-Source tool :: Spidermon
Greetings and welcome to this refreshing edition! Get ready as I share the valuable insights and lessons I gained from intriguing conversations with senior developers at Zyte.
In a recent chat with a senior developer at Zyte, we dived into the challenges faced when scaling web scraping and data extraction solutions. We quickly realised that in today's development landscape, the biggest challenge isn't just the number of servers or storage capacity—it's project maintenance, monitoring, and debugging. No matter how well-prepared or planned you are, you can't escape the uncertainty and dynamic nature of this domain.
But what are some of the issues that contribute to this uncertainty? Let's take a look:
1. Website Changes: Websites love to evolve. They frequently undergo updates, such as layout changes or the removal of specific information. These alterations can throw a wrench into your scraping efforts, making it tricky to retrieve the data you need.
2. Anti-Bot Measures: Anti-bot software and solutions are constantly evolving to keep scraping activities at bay. As these systems change, they can disrupt your scraping process, forcing you to adapt and find new approaches.
3. Data Loss: Picture this: a field on a website breaks, causing the loss of valuable data that you've been accumulating for months or even longer. It's a gut-wrenching experience.
As I listened to the senior developer, a question formed in my mind: How can we prepare ourselves for this uncertainty? How do we handle the dynamic nature of projects, especially when running hundreds or thousands of spiders?
The answer lies in having robust and low-latency monitoring tools in place. These tools act as your vigilant companions, notifying you promptly of any issues that arise, giving you the chance to address them before they become big headaches.
At Zyte, we heavily rely on the power of such tool called Spidermon. In this issue, I've curated a selection of valuable links to help you dive into the world of Spidermon and enhance your understanding of this amazing tool. Let's dig in.
To understand more about Spidermon, read the full documentation here.
What is spider monitoring ?
The key component of any web scraping quality assurance system is a reliable system for monitoring the status and output of your spiders in real-time.A spider monitoring system allows you to detect sources of potential quality issues immediately after spider execution completes.
At Zyte we’ve developed Spidermon-it is an extremely powerful and robust spider monitoring add-on that has been developed and battle tested on millions of spiders.
What to monitor? Check this link.
Spidermon
Spidermon is a framework to build monitors for Scrapy spiders. It offers the following features:
Supporting Blogs
1. Spidermon: Zyte's (formerly Scrapinghub) secret sauce to our data quality & reliability guarantee.
Recommended by LinkedIn
This article Spidermon 101: Spider Monitoring made easy! From installation to the basics, this article will equip you with all the knowledge you need to dive into the world of Spidermon and master its fundamentals.
To make sure you have reliable and high quality data, we recommend developing an automated data QA process made up of four layers.
1. Pipelines
2. Spidermon
3. Manually-Executed Automated QA
4. Manual/Visual QA .
This article will walk you through and clearly detail the four layers of the automated data QA process.
Tip of the week
The developer shared an invaluable piece of advice:As you embark on your journey through the dynamic world of large scale web scraping and data extraction, keep in mind this essential element: robust monitoring tool like spidermon. And, applying the principle of single responsibility to your coding. By keeping each component focused and well-defined, you can simplify maintenance tasks and make them more manageable. Plus, writing monitoring rules becomes a breeze when your codebase adheres to this principle.
Invitation to Speak at Extract Summit 2023 in Dublin, Ireland
We are doing the fifth annual Extract Summit 2023 which will take place later this year in beautiful Dublin, Ireland, and our Call for Speakers is now officially open!To submit your proposal, complete this form. Please submit your proposal by July 15, 2023.
I think everyone is an expert in something. What this means is: if you have experienced something, that makes you an “expert”—in the sense that you had a problem, you found a solution, and now you’re standing on the other side.Now you might have thoughts like:
It’s absolutely normal! But if they are getting in the way of submitting the proposal, then think of this - Anything you’ve experienced, anything you’ve overcome, any problem you’ve solved in your life, any skill you’ve acquired, to a beginner (yourself 2 years ago), you are an “expert.”I am sure you will find an interesting project to talk about or a funny story to share or any cool use case to showcase, traveling down the memory lane. If you want someone to polish or brainstorm your idea with. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us- Developer Advocates : Neha and Felipe . We are here to help you.
PS. This is an open call for proposals, so please feel free to share it with your friends and colleagues.
Written by- Neha Setia Nagpal, Developer Advocate & Web Data Evangelist, Zyte. She is a storyteller and loves to weave stories to explain tech concepts in a funny yet relatable way. Want to know how baking cakes and web data acquisition is similar? Feel free to message her.