The Crawler Conundrum: Navigating the Problem with Pages on Rotten Tomatoes Website

Problem 1: 503 Service Unavailable Error

You’ve sent a request to Rotten Tomatoes, but instead of receiving the HTML content, you’re hit with a 503 Service Unavailable error. This error usually occurs when the website’s rate limit is exceeded or when the server is experiencing high traffic.

To overcome this issue:

1. Implement a retry mechanism with a delay to space out your requests.
2. Rotate your IP addresses or use a proxy to distribute the requests.
3. Use a crawler that can handle rate limiting and retries, such as Scrapy or Apify.

Problem 2: Empty or Incomplete HTML Content

You’ve received the HTML content, but it’s either empty or missing crucial data. This might be due to Rotten Tomatoes’ JavaScript rendering or anti-scraping measures.

To overcome this issue:

1. Use a crawler that can execute JavaScript, such as Selenium or Puppeteer.
2. Implement a rendering timeout to ensure the JavaScript has enough time to load the content.
3. Use a headless browser to render the page and then extract the HTML content.

Problem 3: Redirects to CAPTCHA or Error Pages

Rotten Tomatoes has redirected your request to a CAPTCHA or error page. This usually indicates that the website has detected suspicious activity or doesn’t recognize your User-Agent header.

To overcome this issue:

1. Mimic a legitimate browser’s User-Agent header to avoid detection.
2. Implement a CAPTCHA solver or use a service that can handle CAPTCHAs.
3. Use a crawler that can handle redirects and CAPTCHAs, such as Diffbot or ParseHub.

Solutions and Best Practices for Crawling Rotten Tomatoes

To ensure successful crawling and data extraction from Rotten Tomatoes, follow these best practices:

1. Respect Rotten Tomatoes’ Terms of Service**: Avoid scraping data at an excessive rate or for commercial purposes without permission.
2. Use a Legitimate User-Agent Header**: Mimic a real browser’s User-Agent header to avoid detection.
3. Implement Rate Limiting and Retries**: Space out your requests and implement retries with delays to avoid rate limiting errors.
4. Use a JavaScript-Capable Crawler**: Choose a crawler that can execute JavaScript to receive the complete HTML content.
5. Monitor and Analyze Your Crawler’s Performance**: Keep an eye on your crawler’s performance and adjust your approach as needed.

// Python using Scrapy
import scrapy

class RottenTomatoesSpider(scrapy.Spider):
    name = "rottentomatoes"
    start_urls = ["https://www.rottentomatoes.com/"]

    def parse(self, response):
        # Extract data from the page
        title = response.css("title::text").get()
        print(title)

// JavaScript using Puppeteer
const puppeteer = require("puppeteer");

(async () => {
  const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
  const page = await browser.newPage();
  await page.goto("https://www.rottentomatoes.com/");

  // Extract data from the page
  const title = await page.$eval("title", (el) => el.textContent);
  console.log(title);

  await browser.close();
})();