In today's data-driven world, automated tools such as Janitor AI are changing the way we deal with data. Janitor AI is a powerful data cleaning and crawling tool that can efficiently process and analyze large amounts of data. However, with the continuous upgrading of website anti-crawler technology, data crawling tasks have become increasingly complex. At this time, the introduction of proxy servers has become the key to improving Janitor AI's data crawling capabilities. This article will delve into how proxy servers enhance Janitor AI's data crawling capabilities and analyze its advantages in practical applications.

What is Janitor AI?

Launched in 2023, Janitor AI is a chatbot platform for creating and interacting with AI characters. Each of them can be personalized to meet specific needs and roles with almost no restrictions. However, behind the scenes, it is a multi-purpose tool that excels at Natural Language Processing (NLP), organizing unstructured data, finding formatting errors, and more. The name Janitor AI hints at these capabilities to some extent. Just like a data keeper, cleaning data requires you to sort, organize, and format conflicting data to help make sense of the data you have. All of these are essential to a successful web scraping process, even if AI itself is not meant for such a purpose. Janitor AI's immersive feel and flexibility enable users of all skill levels to achieve their goals. Since you can chat with it informally and use almost anything, it can easily complete a variety of tasks for general web scraping and data analysis.

Core Features of Janitor AI

Data Scraping: Extract structured data from the target website.

Data Cleaning: Automatically clean and organize the scraped data, removing redundant information.

Task Automation: Perform repetitive tasks such as form submissions, content monitoring, etc.

Challenges of Data Scraping

Although Janitor AI is powerful, in actual applications, data scraping tasks face many challenges:

IP blocking: The website monitors the frequency of access, and frequent requests may lead to IP blocking.

Geographic restrictions: Some content is only available to users in a specific region.

Anti-crawler technology: The website limits automated access through technologies such as CAPTCHA and device fingerprint recognition.

Request rate limit: The website may limit the request rate of a single IP, affecting the efficiency of crawling.

The role of proxy servers

As an intermediary layer, proxy servers can significantly enhance Janitor AI's data crawling capabilities. The following are the core roles of proxy servers in data crawling:

1. Hiding the real IP address

The proxy server enables Janitor AI to anonymously access the target website by replacing the user's real IP address. This not only protects the user's privacy, but also avoids IP blocking caused by frequent requests.

2. Bypassing geographic restrictions

By using a proxy server located in the target region, Janitor AI can access geo-restricted content. For example, using a US proxy IP to crawl data that is only available to US users.

3. Distribute the request load

Proxy servers allow Janitor AI to distribute requests to multiple IP addresses, thereby reducing the request frequency of a single IP and avoiding triggering the rate limit of the website.

4. Improve the success rate of crawling

By rotating proxy IPs, Janitor AI can switch to another IP immediately after one IP is blocked, ensuring the continuity of data crawling tasks.

Specific ways that proxy servers enhance Janitor AI's data crawling capabilities

1. Use residential proxies

Residential proxies use real user IP addresses and are more difficult to be detected and blocked by websites. Janitor AI can simulate real user behavior through residential proxies, significantly improving the success rate of crawling.

2. Dynamic IP rotation

By configuring Janitor AI to automatically switch proxy IPs on each request, IP blocking can be effectively avoided. For example, using IPRoyal's rotating proxy service, Janitor AI can use a different IP address on each request.

3. Simulate human behavior

Combined with proxy servers, Janitor AI can further simulate the behavior of human users, such as randomized request intervals, dynamic mouse movements, and page dwell time. This helps bypass the website's anti-crawler detection.

4. Handle CAPTCHA verification

Some proxy services provide CAPTCHA cracking capabilities, and Janitor AI can automatically complete the verification code test through the proxy server to ensure the smooth progress of the crawling task.

5. Distributed crawling

By deploying Janitor AI on multiple proxy servers, distributed crawling can be achieved, which significantly improves crawling efficiency and reduces the risk of being banned.

Configure Janitor AI API

Register Janitor AI account

The first thing to do is to create a Janitor AI account. Just go to the Janitor AI website and click Register in the upper right corner. You need to enter your email and create a password. Alternatively, you can register with a Google or Discord account.

Role creation

1. Select Create role in the upper right corner.

2. You need to create its name, upload an image, describe its personality, and write the first message.

3. The other options are not mandatory. For web scraping operations, we recommend creating a professional and straightforward role.

4. Press Create role.

Get an API key

1. Go to platform.openai.com.

2. Log into your account or create a new one if you haven't already.

3. Click Dashboard in the top right.

4. In the left menu, select API Keys.

5. Press Create New Key.

6. Select API Key is owned by you and give it a name.

7. Leave permissions as Everyone.

8. Press Create Key.

9. Once you've created your key, copy it and use it when adjusting Janitor AI settings.

Adjust Janitor AI settings

1. Start chatting with your Janitor AI character.

2. Click the three-bar menu button in the top right.

3. Select API Settings.

4. Select the LLM model you want to use. We'll use Open AI as an example.

5. Select the OpenAI model preset that corresponds to the GPT model you're using, such as GPT-4.

6. Paste your OpenAI key. Follow the instructions above to get it.

7. Press Check API Key/Model.

8. In this step, you can also add a custom prompt or use one of Janitor AI's suggestions.

9. Save your settings.

Testing and Verifying Integration

Testing does not end after pressing Check API Key/Model, as Janitor AI may still not work as expected. Fortunately, after setting up the API for the Janitor AI role, you can still tweak and change many of its settings.

You will see each past chat in the main window. After pressing it, you can find the Edit button in the upper right corner and change everything from the role name to the sample dialog.

After starting a new chat or opening an old one, you can access all the other settings by pressing the same three-bar menu button. API settings, spawning, chat memory, and other customization settings are all available.

Conclusion

Proxy servers play a vital role in enhancing Janitor AI's data scraping capabilities. By hiding the real IP address, bypassing geographic restrictions, spreading the request load, and increasing the scraping success rate, proxy servers enable Janitor AI to complete data scraping tasks more efficiently. With the continuous upgrading of anti-crawler technology, the combination of proxy servers and Janitor AI will become an important trend in the field of data crawling.