📅 2025-07-14 — Session: Enhanced Web Scraping Pipeline with Spider API
🕒 03:00–03:20
🏷️ Labels: Spider Api, Web Scraping, Automation, Python, Data Extraction
📂 Project: Dev
⭐ Priority: MEDIUM
Session Goal
The primary goal of this session was to enhance the web scraping pipeline for job listings by integrating the Spider API, replacing legacy systems like Selenium, and improving data quality and extraction efficiency.
Key Activities
- Developed a script for processing JSONL files using the Spider API for content extraction.
- Executed a Python script to scrape job listings from BaxEnergy’s careers page, ensuring content verification post-scraping.
- Successfully integrated the Spider scraping tool, verifying content extraction and outlining file paths for input and output.
- Validated the Spider API’s effectiveness over Playwright, detailing advantages and implications for the scraping pipeline.
- Outlined an upgrade path for the Spider scraper, including dual-backend support, logging, and observability enhancements.
- Conducted a quality analysis of scraped job entries, providing insights for improving data extraction processes.
- Suggested enhancements for the Spider scraper script, focusing on best practices, modularity, and robustness.
- Recommended strategies for improving content scraping for job listings, addressing common issues and suggesting extraction methods.
- Replaced legacy Selenium calls with the Spider API, updating scripts for better performance and optional validation.
Achievements
- Successfully replaced Selenium with the Spider API for improved scraping performance.
- Enhanced the web scraping pipeline with dual-backend support and improved logging.
- Provided actionable insights for improving data extraction quality.
Pending Tasks
- Implement suggested enhancements and strategies for further improving the scraping pipeline.
- Continue monitoring the performance and quality of the scraping process to ensure ongoing improvements.