How to Use Residential Proxies with Scrapy or BeautifulSoup

If you’re scraping websites with tools like Scrapy or BeautifulSoup, you’ve probably come across blocks or CAPTCHAs that stop your program from collecting data. This usually happens when websites notice too many requests coming from the same IP address. That’s where residential proxies come in handy. They let your scrapers appear like everyday users by sending requests through real household IPs, not datacenter IPs that websites can easily detect and block.

To avoid these blocks and keep your scraping smooth, a great option is to use residential proxies such as those offered at  https://lightningproxies.net/pricing/unlimited-residential-proxies . These proxies can help you avoid getting blocked so you can focus on getting the data you need without interruptions.

So how do you actually use these proxies with Scrapy or BeautifulSoup?

Let’s start with Scrapy. Scrapy is a popular Python tool for scraping large amounts of data. To set up a residential proxy in Scrapy, you just need to add a bit of code. In your Scrapy project’s settings.py file, add:

```python
HTTP_PROXY = 'http://username:password@proxy_ip:proxy_port'

DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES =
   'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpproxy.HttpProxyMiddleware': 1,

```

Replace the username, password, proxy_ip, and proxy_port with your actual proxy login details. If you’re using rotating proxies, you might want to switch them out with each request using a custom middleware.

Now onto BeautifulSoup. BeautifulSoup doesn’t actually send requests itself—it just helps you parse the pages—but you can pair it with requests or another package like httpx. Here’s an example using requests:

```python
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

proxies =
   'http': 'http://username:password@proxy_ip:proxy_port',
   'https': 'http://username:password@proxy_ip:proxy_port',


response = requests.get('https://example.com', proxies=proxies)
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')
print(soup.title)
```

Pretty simple, right? Just make sure the proxy you’re using supports HTTPS if you’re scraping secure sites.

Using residential proxies can make scraping a lot more reliable. They help you stay under the radar, avoid blocks, and keep collecting the information you need without trouble. As always, respect website terms and scrape responsibly.