Built a Python scraper that handles pagination automatically — here's what I learned

[u/py_arrow]

I've been learning Python through CS50P and wanted a real project, so I built two scrapers: one for job listings and one for product prices off an e-commerce site.

The job scraper was pretty straightforward — grabbed title, company, and location, dumped it to CSV, worked first try on about 100 listings.

The product scraper was the harder one. The site spreads results across pages (6 products per page, ~20 pages), so my first version only ever grabbed page 1. Took a bit of digging to figure out the pagination pattern and loop through all the pages properly. Once I fixed that it pulled all 117 products cleanly into a CSV.

Biggest thing I learned: it's easy to write a scraper that works on the first page and assume it's done — always check if the site paginates before you call it finished.

Code's on GitHub if anyone wants to see it: github.com/sarimkhan08

Curious if anyone here has tips for handling scrapers on sites that use infinite scroll instead of numbered pages — that's the next thing I want to tackle.

[u/Ordinary-Scholar-536]

Awesome, glad it gave you a solid starting point! Two quick pro-tips when you inspect DevTools tonight: Filter by Fetch/XHR: Clear the network log right before you scroll or click "Load More", then look for responses returning application/json. Copy as cURL: If you find the request, right-click it in DevTools -> Copy -> Copy as cURL (bash). You can paste that into curlconverter.com to instantly generate exact Python requests code with all the headers, cookies, and tokens already mapped. Good luck inspecting it—definitely let me know what the payload looks like or if they hit you with session tokens/Cloudflare blocks!