Flickr photo database

Apify’s wide range of tools use a technique called web scraping to extract public data from websites. These scrapers access the website the same way as you would with a browser, find the image, video, or text you want, and download it for you. They’re a fast and efficient way to get data at scale.

Web scraping is a handy method for collecting information from various websites. It's like having a digital assistant that visits web pages on your behalf, pulling out the details you need such as prices, descriptions, addresses, and contact information. But it's more than just text; this tool can also download images and videos, making it a comprehensive way to gather content from the online world. It takes care of all the complex, technical parts, so you don't have to.

Web scraping is a method where you choose websites to collect specific content, including text, images, and videos. You begin by identifying the web pages that host the visual media you're interested in. Next, you use a web scraping tool tailored to locate the parts of the page containing the images or videos you want to download. Once the tool is set up and run, it navigates to the chosen web pages, identifies the images and videos, and downloads them for you. It's a streamlined way to gather pictures and videos from online sources without having to manually download each item.

Yes, web scraping is legal for gathering public information from websites. But be careful with personal or confidential data, as well as intellectual property, because laws and regulations might protect them. It's good practice to check the website's rules or terms of service to know what's allowed. If you're not sure, getting legal advice can help ensure you're using web scraping correctly and within the law.

Actors are serverless cloud programs that run on the Apify platform and do computing jobs. They’re called Actors because, like human actors, they perform actions based on a script. They can perform anything from simple actions (such as filling out a web form or sending an email) to complex operations (such as crawling an entire website or removing duplicates from a large dataset). Actor runs can be as short or as long as necessary. They could last seconds, hours, or even run infinitely.