# Web Scraping API

### Introduction <a href="#getting-started" id="getting-started"></a>

**Shifter Web Scraping API** is a simple and effective REST API interface for scraping web pages at scale.

The API automatically takes care of tasks that would be dealt with programmatically such as:

* Geolocations
* IP Blocks
* IP Rotations
* Captchas
* JavaScript Rendering
* Residential Proxies
* Data Center Proxies
* Custom HTTP Headers
* Custom Cookies

In this documentation, you will find detailed usage guides and code examples in different programming languages that will help you get up and running in the shortest time possible.

If the articles below leave any questions unanswered, please feel free to contact our technical support team.

### Getting Started <a href="#getting-started" id="getting-started"></a>

To authorize your API call, append the api\_key parameter to the URL:

> **`https://scrape.shifter.io/v1?api_key=YOUR API KEY`**

After creating a Shifter account and ordering one of our Web Scraping API plans, the account dashboard will reveal the unique API access key you can use to authenticate with the API.

To do so, simply attach the api\_key parameter to the API’s base URL and set it to your API access key.

**Example:**

> **`https://scrape.shifter.io/v1?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhttpbin.org%2Fget`**

{% hint style="info" %}
**Secure your key:** To prevent unauthorized access to your Web Scraping API account, please make sure to store your API access key in a secure location and never include it in any public scripts or files.
{% endhint %}

In the following code examples, we use a dummy API key of XXXXXX. Please replace it with your real API key.

**API Error Codes**

If your request fails, Web Scraping API will return an error in JSON format.


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://developers.shifter.io/scraping-api/web-scraping-api.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.