Daniel - July 21, 2021
How To Safely Scrape Udacity
Do you want to scrape data from Udacity? If yes, then you need to do it safely to avoid IP blacklisting. I’ll be showing you how to do that in this article.
Udacity Overview
Udacity is an online learning platform. The platform was launched in 2011 and currently, it records more than 11 million users. On Udacity, you can learn the latest digital skills from a range of niches. Top programs on Udacity include;
Artificial Intelligence
Autonomous Systems
Business
Cloud Computing
Cybersecurity
Data Science
Programming and Development
Product Management
Career
When you complete a course on Udacity, you receive a nano degree. Udacity is one of the best platforms to learn digital skills online for various reasons. Learning is flexible, you can learn at your own time and pace. The website helps you create a custom schedule that works.
The programs are taught by industry experts and you get real-world projects to practice on. Some of these programs are offered in partnership with top companies so you can learn the exact tech skills that companies need. Furthermore, you get assigned a technical mentor that’ll guide you through your learning process.
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Udacity also helps you land a career job after completing your learning. Courses on Udacity are all premium courses. You have the option to pay monthly or pay every 3 months. You can cancel your subscription at any time.
Scraping Udacity
Let’s assume you want to study some digital skills on your own. Udacity features up-to-date data on the syllabus of all major digital skills programs. You can scrape Udacity to get this data easily. The Udacity website isn’t for individual learners alone. Enterprises use it to transform their business, and Governments also use it to transform their workforce.
As a business, you can scrape Udacity to get valuable data on what digital skills your business needs from what others are doing. Scraping Udacity involves extracting data and you need to use a web scraping bot. A web scraping bot is a program. It’ll access Udacity and automatically extract specific data as programmed.
The problem here is that the bot may block your website. Udacity terms of use are against web scraping and automated traffic in general. Hackers often make use of bots to inject codes and steal data from websites. This is why websites employ anti-bot detectors to find and blacklist IPs using bots.
How to Scrape Udacity Safely
To scrape Udacity safely, you have to extract data without getting your IP blacklisted. You can do that by using a proxy in addition to your web scraping bot. Your web scraping bot will not be visible to Udacity anti-bot detectors if you use a proxy. When your bot makes a request, it is routed through the proxy which will then send the request on behalf of your bot to the proxy.
The returning request is routed through the proxy while extracting the data. Following that, the proxy will send the request to your computer. The reason why your bot won’t be blocked is that you’ll be browsing with different IPs. Proxy servers come with thousands and millions of IPs.
While your real IP stays hidden, you can rotate the proxy IPs to ensure that none is blocked. You’ll have switched to a different IP before any is detected for bot activity.
Best Proxies For Scraping Udacity
Your proxy provider will determine if you’re using a good proxy or not. If you want the best, I advise you purchase your proxies from ProxyRack. ProxyRack offers more than 20,000 data center IPs and more than 5 million residential IPs. Hence, you have both data center and residential proxies to choose from.
Check out their pricing below;
Residential Proxies
Unmetered Residential Proxies: Starting from $80
Premium GEO Residential Proxies: Starting from $14.95
Private Residential Proxies: Starting from $99.95
Datacenter Proxies
USA Rotating Datacenter Proxies: Starting at $120
Mixed Rotating Datacenter Proxies: Starting at $120
Shared Datacenter Proxies: Starting at $49
Canada Rotating Proxies: Starting at $65
Bottom Line
Using a proxy is the best way to safely scrape data off Udacity. Your real IP is hidden and the website won’t detect your scraping bot.
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