Ac Scraper
Spider read open.ac.uk in 1.4 s without a browser and returned 131 lines of clean markdown, including sections like "Project Title" and "Contents".
I do ask everyone to number each top level section, other than the opening table of contents and the closing summary of references. The reason for this is that numbering makes it easy to provide cross references between each of the sections without having to write too many words.Before summarising the suggested structure, I have three tips for students:1. Ensure that your report is as readable as possible (but do make sure it remains a formal report). The project marker may be unfamiliar with the subject that you are writing about. Take time to set the scene and explain concepts that may be unfamiliar to a reader.2. Do have a look through the OU Skills for Study resources (OU website). In particular, I’m a fan of The Good Study Guide which you can find through the OU study booklets page (OU website). The Good Study Guide offers some really helpful advice about researching and writing.3. Think of the project report as a ‘technical narrative’, or a ‘technical story’. It is also a story that can contain other narratives. There is a story about your planning, a story about your reading, a story about what has been done, and what has been learnt. Make your technical story as interesting as you can.Onto my suggested structure (which has been developed from official guidance from the module team). Within the structure, I also highlight how each section relates to each of the module learning outcomes:### Project TitleBegin with a title page where you give your project a short and descriptive title. A good rule is: no more than 10 words, but ideally around 6. Present the title in the Word Title Heading style. Underneath the title, do leave your name and your student number.This first page links to the following learning outcome:**LO2 (Project Goals)** Identify and refine the goals and content of your project which should be within the area of your chosen specialist route, if applicable.### ContentsThe same call, in code.
The capture above came back as markdown. These examples add a key, so you get browser rendering, proxies, and concurrency on open.ac.uk.
import { SpiderBrowser } from "spider-browser";
const spider = new SpiderBrowser({
apiKey: process.env.SPIDER_API_KEY!,
});
await spider.connect();
const page = spider.page!;
await page.goto("https://open.ac.uk");
// No selectors, no schema. Spider reads the page and names the fields.
const data = await page.scrape();
console.log(data);
await spider.close();import { Spider } from "@spider-cloud/spider-client";
const spider = new Spider({ apiKey: process.env.SPIDER_API_KEY! });
const result = await spider.scrapeUrl("https://www.open.ac.uk", {
return_format: "markdown",
});
console.log(result);Ready for volume? Get an API key →
Fields you can pull.
Spider names these from the page. The capture above came back as markdown; the same
call with return_format: "json" returns them as keys.
What open.ac.uk costs to scrape.
The capture above cost $0.000138 to fetch. Pricing is $1 per GB of pre-transformation bandwidth plus $0.001 per CPU minute, so a page like this one lands at a fraction of a cent. Failed requests are billed at $0.
- Free balance on signup
- No card required to test
- Balance never expires
Run it keyless, no account
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Start scraping open.ac.uk.
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