Scrape Entire Website
Scrape An Entire Website [closed] – Stack Overflow
I know this is super old and I just wanted to put my 2 cents in.
wget -m -k -K -E -l 7 -t 6 -w 5
A little clarification regarding each of the switches:
-m Essentially, this means “mirror the site”, and it recursively grabs pages & images as it spiders through the site. It checks the timestamp, so if you run wget a 2nd time with this switch, it will only update files/pages that are newer than the previous time.
-k This will modify links in the html to point to local files. If instead of using things like as links throughout your site you were actually using a full you’ll probably need/want this. I turn it on just to be on the safe side – chances are at least 1 link will cause a problem otherwise.
-K The option above (lowercase k) edits the html. If you want the “untouched” version as well, use this switch and it will save both the changed version and the original. It’s just good practise in case something is awry and you want to compare both versions. You can always delete the one you didn’t want later.
-E This saves HTML & CSS with “proper extensions”. Careful with this one – if your site didn’t have extensions on every page, this will add it. However, if your site already has every file named with something like “” you’ll now end up with “”.
-l 7 By default, the -m we used above will recurse/spider through the entire site. Usually that’s ok. But sometimes your site will have an infinite loop in which case wget will download forever. Think of the typical example. It’s somewhat rare nowadays – most sites behave well and won’t do this, but to be on the safe side, figure out the most clicks it should possibly take to get anywhere from the main page to reach any real page on the website, pad it a little (it would suck if you used a value of 7 and found out an hour later that your site was 8 levels deep! ) and use that #. Of course, if you know your site has a structure that will behave, there’s nothing wrong with omitting this and having the comfort of knowing that the 1 hidden page on your site that was 50 levels deep was actually found.
-t 6 If trying to access/download a certain page or file fails, this sets the number of retries before it gives up on that file and moves on. You usually do want it to eventually give up (set it to 0 if you want it to try forever), but you also don’t want it to give up if the site was just being wonky for a second or two. I find 6 to be reasonable.
-w 5 This tells wget to wait a few seconds (5 seconds in this case) before grabbing the next file. It’s often critical to use something here (at least 1 second). Let me explain. By default, wget will grab pages as fast as it possibly can. This can easily be multiple requests per second which has the potential to put huge load on the server (particularly if the site is written in PHP, makes MySQL accesses on each request, and doesn’t utilize a cache). If the website is on shared hosting, that load can get someone kicked off their host. Even on a VPS it can bring some sites to their knees. And even if the site itself survives, being bombarded with an insane number of requests within a few seconds can look like a DOS attack which could very well get your IP auto-blocked. If you don’t know for certain that the site can handle a massive influx of traffic, use the -w # switch. 5 is usually quite safe. Even 1 is probably ok most of the time. But use something.
Is Web Scraping Illegal? Depends on What the Meaning of the Word Is
Depending on who you ask, web scraping can be loved or hated.
Web scraping has existed for a long time and, in its good form, it’s a key underpinning of the internet. “Good bots” enable, for example, search engines to index web content, price comparison services to save consumers money, and market researchers to gauge sentiment on social media.
“Bad bots, ” however, fetch content from a website with the intent of using it for purposes outside the site owner’s control. Bad bots make up 20 percent of all web traffic and are used to conduct a variety of harmful activities, such as denial of service attacks, competitive data mining, online fraud, account hijacking, data theft, stealing of intellectual property, unauthorized vulnerability scans, spam and digital ad fraud.
So, is it Illegal to Scrape a Website?
So is it legal or illegal? Web scraping and crawling aren’t illegal by themselves. After all, you could scrape or crawl your own website, without a hitch.
Startups love it because it’s a cheap and powerful way to gather data without the need for partnerships. Big companies use web scrapers for their own gain but also don’t want others to use bots against them.
The general opinion on the matter does not seem to matter anymore because in the past 12 months it has become very clear that the federal court system is cracking down more than ever.
Let’s take a look back. Web scraping started in a legal grey area where the use of bots to scrape a website was simply a nuisance. Not much could be done about the practice until in 2000 eBay filed a preliminary injunction against Bidder’s Edge. In the injunction eBay claimed that the use of bots on the site, against the will of the company violated Trespass to Chattels law.
The court granted the injunction because users had to opt in and agree to the terms of service on the site and that a large number of bots could be disruptive to eBay’s computer systems. The lawsuit was settled out of court so it all never came to a head but the legal precedent was set.
In 2001 however, a travel agency sued a competitor who had “scraped” its prices from its Web site to help the rival set its own prices. The judge ruled that the fact that this scraping was not welcomed by the site’s owner was not sufficient to make it “unauthorized access” for the purpose of federal hacking laws.
Two years later the legal standing for eBay v Bidder’s Edge was implicitly overruled in the “Intel v. Hamidi”, a case interpreting California’s common law trespass to chattels. It was the wild west once again. Over the next several years the courts ruled time and time again that simply putting “do not scrape us” in your website terms of service was not enough to warrant a legally binding agreement. For you to enforce that term, a user must explicitly agree or consent to the terms. This left the field wide open for scrapers to do as they wish.
Fast forward a few years and you start seeing a shift in opinion. In 2009 Facebook won one of the first copyright suits against a web scraper. This laid the groundwork for numerous lawsuits that tie any web scraping with a direct copyright violation and very clear monetary damages. The most recent case being AP v Meltwater where the courts stripped what is referred to as fair use on the internet.
Previously, for academic, personal, or information aggregation people could rely on fair use and use web scrapers. The court now gutted the fair use clause that companies had used to defend web scraping. The court determined that even small percentages, sometimes as little as 4. 5% of the content, are significant enough to not fall under fair use. The only caveat the court made was based on the simple fact that this data was available for purchase. Had it not been, it is unclear how they would have ruled. Then a few months back the gauntlet was dropped.
Andrew Auernheimer was convicted of hacking based on the act of web scraping. Although the data was unprotected and publically available via AT&T’s website, the fact that he wrote web scrapers to harvest that data in mass amounted to “brute force attack”. He did not have to consent to terms of service to deploy his bots and conduct the web scraping. The data was not available for purchase. It wasn’t behind a login. He did not even financially gain from the aggregation of the data. Most importantly, it was buggy programing by AT&T that exposed this information in the first place. Yet Andrew was at fault. This isn’t just a civil suit anymore. This charge is a felony violation that is on par with hacking or denial of service attacks and carries up to a 15-year sentence for each charge.
In 2016, Congress passed its first legislation specifically to target bad bots — the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which bans the use of software that circumvents security measures on ticket seller websites. Automated ticket scalping bots use several techniques to do their dirty work including web scraping that incorporates advanced business logic to identify scalping opportunities, input purchase details into shopping carts, and even resell inventory on secondary markets.
To counteract this type of activity, the BOTS Act:
Prohibits the circumvention of a security measure used to enforce ticket purchasing limits for an event with an attendance capacity of greater than 200 persons.
Prohibits the sale of an event ticket obtained through such a circumvention violation if the seller participated in, had the ability to control, or should have known about it.
Treats violations as unfair or deceptive acts under the Federal Trade Commission Act. The bill provides authority to the FTC and states to enforce against such violations.
In other words, if you’re a venue, organization or ticketing software platform, it is still on you to defend against this fraudulent activity during your major onsales.
The UK seems to have followed the US with its Digital Economy Act 2017 which achieved Royal Assent in April. The Act seeks to protect consumers in a number of ways in an increasingly digital society, including by “cracking down on ticket touts by making it a criminal offence for those that misuse bot technology to sweep up tickets and sell them at inflated prices in the secondary market. ”
In the summer of 2017, LinkedIn sued hiQ Labs, a San Francisco-based startup. hiQ was scraping publicly available LinkedIn profiles to offer clients, according to its website, “a crystal ball that helps you determine skills gaps or turnover risks months ahead of time. ”
You might find it unsettling to think that your public LinkedIn profile could be used against you by your employer.
Yet a judge on Aug. 14, 2017 decided this is okay. Judge Edward Chen of the U. S. District Court in San Francisco agreed with hiQ’s claim in a lawsuit that Microsoft-owned LinkedIn violated antitrust laws when it blocked the startup from accessing such data. He ordered LinkedIn to remove the barriers within 24 hours. LinkedIn has filed to appeal.
The ruling contradicts previous decisions clamping down on web scraping. And it opens a Pandora’s box of questions about social media user privacy and the right of businesses to protect themselves from data hijacking.
There’s also the matter of fairness. LinkedIn spent years creating something of real value. Why should it have to hand it over to the likes of hiQ — paying for the servers and bandwidth to host all that bot traffic on top of their own human users, just so hiQ can ride LinkedIn’s coattails?
I am in the business of blocking bots. Chen’s ruling has sent a chill through those of us in the cybersecurity industry devoted to fighting web-scraping bots.
I think there is a legitimate need for some companies to be able to prevent unwanted web scrapers from accessing their site.
In October of 2017, and as reported by Bloomberg, Ticketmaster sued Prestige Entertainment, claiming it used computer programs to illegally buy as many as 40 percent of the available seats for performances of “Hamilton” in New York and the majority of the tickets Ticketmaster had available for the Mayweather v. Pacquiao fight in Las Vegas two years ago.
Prestige continued to use the illegal bots even after it paid a $3. 35 million to settle New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s probe into the ticket resale industry.
Under that deal, Prestige promised to abstain from using bots, Ticketmaster said in the complaint. Ticketmaster asked for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and a court order to stop Prestige from using bots.
Are the existing laws too antiquated to deal with the problem? Should new legislation be introduced to provide more clarity? Most sites don’t have any web scraping protections in place. Do the companies have some burden to prevent web scraping?
As the courts try to further decide the legality of scraping, companies are still having their data stolen and the business logic of their websites abused. Instead of looking to the law to eventually solve this technology problem, it’s time to start solving it with anti-bot and anti-scraping technology today.
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How to Download a Web Page or Article to Read Offline | PCMag
Information overload is real. You don’t always have time to read a 5, 000-word feature or juicy interview when it pops up on your Twitter feed. And even when you do have the time, you may be underground between subway stops, caught in a dead zone, or have no Wi-Fi connection. The most reliable way to catch up on your digital reading is to make sure it’s saved and accessible for offline reading. Many apps and browsers can help you save it for later. Here’s how to download what you want and keep it readable, even without an internet a Web Page in Chrome
DesktopFor Chrome users on the desktop, the easiest built-in way to save a web page for offline reading is to download the page as a file. Open the three-dot menu on the top right and select More Tools > Save page as. You can also right-click anywhere on the page and select Save as or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + S in Windows or Command + S in can save the complete web page, including text and media assets, or just the HTML text. Download the file you prefer to your computer and read the page at any time, even without an internet
Save a web page on the Android app by opening the three-dot menu icon and tapping the download icon up top. A banner at the bottom of the screen will tell you when the page has been made available for offline reading. Click Open to view a static version of the page. Access downloads later by opening the three-dot menu and tapping on iOS and iPadOS
To make an article available for offline reading within the Chrome app on iPhone or iPad, tap the Share icon (an upward-facing arrow) and select Add to Reading List. Open the browser’s three-dot menu and select Reading List to view any saved pages. Long-press a saved item until a menu pops up, then tap Open Offline Version and you’re ready to read a Web Page in Microsoft Edge
Microsoft’s Edge browser is powered by the same Chromium engine found in Google Chrome, so directions here will be similar. Click the three-dot ellipsis menu on the top right and select More tools > Save page as to download a file to your Android, the process is also similar to Chrome, but the three-dot menu is in the bottom-center of the screen. Tap it, swipe up slightly, and select Download page. The download will appear at the bottom of the screen; tap Open to read. To read later, tap the three-dot menu and select Downloads. Web pages you have saved will be available to read offline automatically.
On Edge for iOS, the Reading list option appears when you tap the three-dot menu, though it was grayed out for us. Your best bet might be to tap the Share icon and Save to a Web Page in Safari
Save a web page in Safari by opening File > Save As. You can then pick between file formats Web Archive (all text and media assets) or Page Source (source text only). Choose File > Export as PDF if you need a PDF version of the article.
Safari also has a Reading List feature that allows you to save articles for offline reading. Desktop users can click the Share icon and choose Add to Reading List. Another option is Bookmarks > Add to Reading List. Once added, click the Show sidebar button in the Safari toolbar and make sure the eyeglasses icon is selected. Right-click an entry and select Save sure saved articles are available for offline reading by default under Safari > Preferences > Advanced. Check the box next to Save articles for offline reading process works similarly on iOS and iPadOS. Tap the Share pane and choose Add to Reading List. Tap the Bookmark icon and choose the eyeglasses icon to view your reading list. Long-press the article and select Save Offline from the pop-up menu to save the article.
Set saved articles to be made available offline by default under Settings > Safari. Scroll all the way to the bottom and turn on the switch next to Automatically Save a Web Page in Firefox
For offline reading with Firefox, open the hamburger menu and choose Save Page As to download the page as a file. You will have the choice to download the complete page, the HTML only, or a simple text file.
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Otherwise, the desktop browser relies heavily on integration with Pocket, the save-it-later service Firefox maker Mozilla acquired in 2017. Right-click and select Save Page to Pocket to do just that, or click the Pocket icon on the top right. Content saved to Pocket is accessible via or the Pocket mobile apps. Refresh Pocket to make sure what you saved appears in your account, and it will then be available to read offline.
The iOS version of Firefox has a reading list feature that allows for offline reading. Open the three-dot menu in the search bar and select Add to Reading List. Once an article has been saved, tap the hamburger menu and select Reading List. Select the article you want to open and it will be made available to you offline the iOS and Android Firefox apps, meanwhile, you can select Save to Pocket, too. Extensions and Apps
Though save-it-later service Pocket is owned by Mozilla, it’s not limited to Firefox. It’s available as an official browser extension for Chrome and Safari for one-click saves, and on options include the Save Page WE extension for Chrome and Firefox, which saves web pages to your computer with a single click; adjust the settings to determine how much information is more high-powered solutions, turn to the utility software HTTrack (for Windows, Linux, and Android) or SiteSucker (for macOS and iOS). These programs can download entire website directories from a URL, letting you navigate a site while offline.
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Frequently Asked Questions about scrape entire website
How do you scrap an entire website?
Web scraping and crawling aren’t illegal by themselves. … Web scraping started in a legal grey area where the use of bots to scrape a website was simply a nuisance. Not much could be done about the practice until in 2000 eBay filed a preliminary injunction against Bidder’s Edge.
Is it legal to scrape any website?
For more high-powered solutions, turn to the utility software HTTrack (for Windows, Linux, and Android) or SiteSucker (for macOS and iOS). These programs can download entire website directories from a URL, letting you navigate a site while offline.Oct 9, 2021
Can you download an entire website?
To duplicate a website, click Clone App/Create Staging. A popup will appear asking if the customer wants to Clone App or Create Staging. Click the dropdown and select the server on which you want to create a copy of the website and click Continue. The Cloudways Platform takes a few minutes to copy a website.Sep 24, 2021
