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Ștefan Răcilă

Full Stack Developer9 articles

Stefan Racila is a DevOps and Full Stack Engineer at WebScrapingAPI, building product features and maintaining the infrastructure that keeps the platform reliable.

Ștefan Răcilă, Full Stack Developer @ WebScrapingAPI

Published Articles

9 articles

Python web scrapingproxy infrastructurebrowser automationGuidesScience of Web Scraping

Published Articles

Scrapy Splash Tutorial: Render JavaScript Pages
Guides

Scrapy Splash Tutorial: Render JavaScript Pages

TL;DR: Scrapy Splash pairs Scrapy's fast crawling engine with the Splash headless browser to render JavaScript-heavy pages. This scrapy splash tutorial walks you through Docker setup, Scrapy project configuration, SplashRequest basics, Lua scripts for scrolling and clicking, proxy integration, and fixing the most common errors you will encounter.

Ștefan Răcilă11 min read
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How to Use Proxies with Python Requests: From Basic to Production
Guides

How to Use Proxies with Python Requests: From Basic to Production

TL;DR: This guide walks through how to use proxies with Python Requests end to end: a working proxies dict, authenticated URLs, environment variables, Session reuse, SOCKS5 with no DNS leaks, and a rotation pool with retries and a circuit breaker. By the end, you will know when a managed API earns its keep over a DIY pool.

Ștefan Răcilă9 min read
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What Is Browser Automation? A Practical Guide
Science of Web Scraping

What Is Browser Automation? A Practical Guide

TL;DR: Browser automation is the practice of driving a real or headless web browser from code so it clicks, types, navigates, and reads pages on your behalf. This guide explains what is browser automation under the hood, compares Selenium, Playwright, Puppeteer, and Cypress, and shows when not to reach for a full browser.

Ștefan Răcilă10 min read
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Web Scraping vs Data Mining: Differences, Pipelines, and When to Use Each
Science of Web Scraping

Web Scraping vs Data Mining: Differences, Pipelines, and When to Use Each

TL;DR: Web scraping collects raw data from public web pages. Data mining analyzes structured data to surface patterns, predictions, and segments. They are different stages of the same lifecycle, and most production systems combine them in a scrape-then-normalize-then-mine pipeline.

Ștefan Răcilă12 min read
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Best Web Scraping Courses for Developers
Science of Web Scraping

Best Web Scraping Courses for Developers

TL;DR: The best web scraping courses depend on your language, level, and target use case. This guide compares five paid picks across Udemy, Coursera, DataCamp, and Packt, points to free supplements like official docs, and shows how to bridge from finishing a course to running production scrapers.

Ștefan Răcilă10 min read
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CSS Selectors Cheat Sheet - How to scrape the web tips and tricks
Science of Web Scraping

CSS Selectors Cheat Sheet - How to scrape the web tips and tricks

Use this CSS Selectors Cheat Sheet when you want to scrape the web like a pro

Ștefan Răcilă6 min read
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How and Why to Scrape Websites: The Ultimate guide
Guides

How and Why to Scrape Websites: The Ultimate guide

Find out everything related to recycling of shredded paper waste. From why to shred paper and how to recycle it.

Ștefan Răcilă9 min read
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Top 8 Alternatives to Import.io for Data Scraping (2023 Edition)
Guides

Top 8 Alternatives to Import.io for Data Scraping (2023 Edition)

Import.io tool works well, and firms use it to scrape eCommerce web data. But, if its drawbacks turn you off, here are eight best alternatives to import.io.

Ștefan Răcilă11 min read
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Top 7 ProxyScrape Alternatives: Your Ultimate Guide to Web Scraping
Guides

Top 7 ProxyScrape Alternatives: Your Ultimate Guide to Web Scraping

A precise comparison of the Top 7 ProxyScrape alternatives out there and which Web Scraper came out on top!

Ștefan Răcilă9 min read
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