general

Web Scraping

Automated extraction of data from websites using software tools that parse HTML and collect structured information at scale.

Web scraping is the automated process of extracting data from websites using software. A scraper sends HTTP requests to target URLs, receives HTML responses, parses the DOM to locate specific elements, and saves the extracted data as structured records — CSV, JSON, or database rows.

Modern web scraping must overcome a stack of defences: JavaScript-rendered content that requires a real browser engine, anti-bot protection layers that inspect TLS fingerprints and browser signals, rate limits that cap requests per IP, and CAPTCHA challenges that gate access to authenticated sections. The toolchain ranges from simple HTTP fetch + HTML parser combinations to full browser automation frameworks like Playwright and Puppeteer.

AlterLab's scraping API abstracts the entire complexity stack — proxy rotation, browser fingerprinting, JavaScript rendering, and challenge resolution — into a single POST request. Developers send a URL and receive clean HTML or extracted JSON without managing any infrastructure.

Examples

curl -X POST https://api.alterlab.io/v1/scrape \
  -H "X-API-Key: sk_live_..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com"}'

Related Terms

Data Extraction
The process of identifying and pulling specific fields from raw web content, converting unstructured HTML into typed JSON records.
Web Crawler
A program that automatically navigates websites by following hyperlinks, systematically indexing pages across an entire domain.
Headless Browser
A web browser that runs without a graphical user interface, executing JavaScript and rendering pages exactly as a real browser would.
JavaScript Rendering
The process of executing a page's JavaScript in a browser engine before extracting content, required for React, Vue, and Angular SPAs.
Anti-Bot Protection
Systems deployed by websites to detect and block automated traffic using TLS fingerprinting, CAPTCHA challenges, and behavioural analysis.
Back to Glossary
Read the DocsTry the API
    Web Scraping — Web Scraping Glossary | AlterLab