# Proxy management and handling Blocks Scrapling's `ProxyRotator` manages proxy rotation across requests. It works with all session types and integrates with the spider's blocked request retry system. ## ProxyRotator The `ProxyRotator` class manages a list of proxies and rotates through them automatically. Pass it to any session type via the `proxy_rotator` parameter: ```python from scrapling.spiders import Spider, Response from scrapling.fetchers import FetcherSession, ProxyRotator class MySpider(Spider): name = "my_spider" start_urls = ["https://example.com"] def configure_sessions(self, manager): rotator = ProxyRotator([ "http://proxy1:8080", "http://proxy2:8080", "http://user:pass@proxy3:8080", ]) manager.add("default", FetcherSession(proxy_rotator=rotator)) async def parse(self, response: Response): # Check which proxy was used print(f"Proxy used: {response.meta.get('proxy')}") yield {"title": response.css("title::text").get("")} ``` Each request automatically gets the next proxy in the rotation. The proxy used is stored in `response.meta["proxy"]` so you can track which proxy fetched which page. Browser sessions support both string and dict proxy formats: ```python from scrapling.fetchers import AsyncDynamicSession, AsyncStealthySession, ProxyRotator # String proxies work for all session types rotator = ProxyRotator([ "http://proxy1:8080", "http://proxy2:8080", ]) # Dict proxies (Playwright format) work for browser sessions rotator = ProxyRotator([ {"server": "http://proxy1:8080", "username": "user", "password": "pass"}, {"server": "http://proxy2:8080"}, ]) # Then inside the spider def configure_sessions(self, manager): rotator = ProxyRotator(["http://proxy1:8080", "http://proxy2:8080"]) manager.add("browser", AsyncStealthySession(proxy_rotator=rotator)) ``` **Important:** 1. You cannot use the `proxy_rotator` argument together with the static `proxy` or `proxies` parameters on the same session. Pick one approach when configuring the session, and override it per request later if needed. 2. By default, all browser-based sessions use a persistent browser context with a pool of tabs. However, since browsers can't set a proxy per tab, when you use a `ProxyRotator`, the fetcher will automatically open a separate context for each proxy, with one tab per context. Once the tab's job is done, both the tab and its context are closed. ## Custom Rotation Strategies By default, `ProxyRotator` uses cyclic rotation - it iterates through proxies sequentially, wrapping around at the end. You can provide a custom strategy function to change this behavior, but it has to match the below signature: ```python from scrapling.core._types import ProxyType def my_strategy(proxies: list, current_index: int) -> tuple[ProxyType, int]: ... ``` It receives the list of proxies and the current index, and must return the chosen proxy and the next index. Below are some examples of custom rotation strategies you can use. ### Random Rotation ```python import random from scrapling.fetchers import ProxyRotator def random_strategy(proxies, current_index): idx = random.randint(0, len(proxies) - 1) return proxies[idx], idx rotator = ProxyRotator( ["http://proxy1:8080", "http://proxy2:8080", "http://proxy3:8080"], strategy=random_strategy, ) ``` ### Weighted Rotation ```python import random def weighted_strategy(proxies, current_index): # First proxy gets 60% of traffic, others split the rest weights = [60] + [40 // (len(proxies) - 1)] * (len(proxies) - 1) proxy = random.choices(proxies, weights=weights, k=1)[0] return proxy, current_index # Index doesn't matter for weighted rotator = ProxyRotator(proxies, strategy=weighted_strategy) ``` ## Per-Request Proxy Override You can override the rotator for individual requests by passing `proxy=` as a keyword argument: ```python async def parse(self, response: Response): # This request uses the rotator's next proxy yield response.follow("/page1", callback=self.parse_page) # This request uses a specific proxy, bypassing the rotator yield response.follow( "/special-page", callback=self.parse_page, proxy="http://special-proxy:8080", ) ``` This is useful when certain pages require a specific proxy (e.g., a geo-located proxy for region-specific content). ## Blocked Request Handling The spider has built-in blocked request detection and retry. By default, it considers the following HTTP status codes blocked: `401`, `403`, `407`, `429`, `444`, `500`, `502`, `503`, `504`. The retry system works like this: 1. After a response comes back, the spider calls the `is_blocked(response)` method. 2. If blocked, it copies the request and calls the `retry_blocked_request()` method so you can modify it before retrying. 3. The retried request is re-queued with `dont_filter=True` (bypassing deduplication) and lower priority, so it's not retried right away. 4. This repeats up to `max_blocked_retries` times (default: 3). **Tip:** 1. On retry, the previous `proxy`/`proxies` kwargs are cleared from the request automatically, so the rotator assigns a fresh proxy. 2. The `max_blocked_retries` attribute is different than the session retries and doesn't share the counter. ### Custom Block Detection Override `is_blocked()` to add your own detection logic: ```python class MySpider(Spider): name = "my_spider" start_urls = ["https://example.com"] async def is_blocked(self, response: Response) -> bool: # Check status codes (default behavior) if response.status in {403, 429, 503}: return True # Check response content body = response.body.decode("utf-8", errors="ignore") if "access denied" in body.lower() or "rate limit" in body.lower(): return True return False async def parse(self, response: Response): yield {"title": response.css("title::text").get("")} ``` ### Customizing Retries Override `retry_blocked_request()` to modify the request before retrying. The `max_blocked_retries` attribute controls how many times a blocked request is retried (default: 3): ```python from scrapling.spiders import Spider, SessionManager, Request, Response from scrapling.fetchers import FetcherSession, AsyncStealthySession class MySpider(Spider): name = "my_spider" start_urls = ["https://example.com"] max_blocked_retries = 5 def configure_sessions(self, manager: SessionManager) -> None: manager.add('requests', FetcherSession(impersonate=['chrome', 'firefox', 'safari'])) manager.add('stealth', AsyncStealthySession(block_webrtc=True), lazy=True) async def retry_blocked_request(self, request: Request, response: Response) -> Request: request.sid = "stealth" self.logger.info(f"Retrying blocked request: {request.url}") return request async def parse(self, response: Response): yield {"title": response.css("title::text").get("")} ``` What happened above is that I left the blocking detection logic unchanged and had the spider mainly use requests until it got blocked, then switch to the stealthy browser. Putting it all together: ```python from scrapling.spiders import Spider, SessionManager, Request, Response from scrapling.fetchers import FetcherSession, AsyncStealthySession, ProxyRotator cheap_proxies = ProxyRotator([ "http://proxy1:8080", "http://proxy2:8080"]) # A format acceptable by the browser expensive_proxies = ProxyRotator([ {"server": "http://residential_proxy1:8080", "username": "user", "password": "pass"}, {"server": "http://residential_proxy2:8080", "username": "user", "password": "pass"}, {"server": "http://mobile_proxy1:8080", "username": "user", "password": "pass"}, {"server": "http://mobile_proxy2:8080", "username": "user", "password": "pass"}, ]) class MySpider(Spider): name = "my_spider" start_urls = ["https://example.com"] max_blocked_retries = 5 def configure_sessions(self, manager: SessionManager) -> None: manager.add('requests', FetcherSession(impersonate=['chrome', 'firefox', 'safari'], proxy_rotator=cheap_proxies)) manager.add('stealth', AsyncStealthySession(block_webrtc=True, proxy_rotator=expensive_proxies), lazy=True) async def retry_blocked_request(self, request: Request, response: Response) -> Request: request.sid = "stealth" self.logger.info(f"Retrying blocked request: {request.url}") return request async def parse(self, response: Response): yield {"title": response.css("title::text").get("")} ``` The above logic is: requests are made with cheap proxies, such as datacenter proxies, until they are blocked, then retried with higher-quality proxies, such as residential or mobile proxies.