Resources · Blog

Blog about data collection

Guides, research, and case studies on web scraping, price monitoring, and data delivery for analytics, marketing, and product needs.

Anti-Scraping & Protection
How to Protect Your Data from Cyber Theft

Practical strategies to protect your data from cyber theft: encryption, access controls, backups, monitoring, and staff awareness. Strengthen your defenses.

24 July · 12 min
Techniques
Scraping YouTube Videos to Count Total Play Length

Scraping YouTube videos in practice: traverse a channel or playlist and total up video durations with a simple script. Grab the example code and adapt it.

22 July · 10 min
Data & Formats
URL Parsing: What It Is and How to Parse URLs in Any Language

URL parsing explained: split any URL into protocol, domain, path, and query parameters, with code examples in Python, JavaScript, PHP, and more. Learn how.

20 July · 8 min
Techniques
Headless Firefox Scraping on Linux: A Tutorial

Run headless Firefox scraping on Linux: install geckodriver, launch Firefox without a GUI, and scrape JavaScript pages via Selenium. Follow along here.

18 July · 8 min
By Language
PHP DOMXPath: Parsing Web Page Content

Parse web page content with PHP DOMXPath: load HTML into DOMDocument, write XPath queries, and extract nodes cleanly. Work through the live examples.

16 July · 9 min
Tools & Reviews
Using External Input Data in Off-the-Shelf Web Scrapers

Feed URL lists, keywords, and CSV inputs into off-the-shelf web scrapers to run batch extraction jobs. See which tools support it and how to set it up.

14 July · 8 min
Techniques
Parsing HTML with Regex: Lookaround for Element Extraction

Use regex lookahead and lookbehind to extract HTML elements cleanly: syntax, worked examples, and when a real parser beats regex. See the patterns.

12 July · 9 min
Techniques
Selenium Web Scraping: Pros and Cons of WebDriver

Selenium web scraping weighed up: where WebDriver shines on dynamic sites, where it slows you down, and faster alternatives. Read the honest breakdown.

10 July · 10 min
Data & Formats
Inserting Web Scraping Results into SQL Server

Compare ways to load web scraping results into SQL Server: INSERT scripts, bulk insert, SSIS, and ORMs, with pros and cons of each. Pick the right method.

8 July · 10 min