Migrating from Bright Data Web Unlocker to Zyte API#

Learn how to migrate from Bright Data Web Unlocker to Zyte API.

Feature comparison#

The following table summarizes the feature differences between both products:

Feature

Zyte API

Web Unlocker

API

HTTP

Proxy

Browser HTML

Yes

No

Screenshots

Yes

No

Browser actions

Yes

No

API migration#

The main challenge is switching from a proxy API to an HTTP API.

Because Zyte API has a wider range of features and can hence provide a richer output, you need JSON parsing, and in some cases base64-decoding, to get your data.

For example, to get the same output as the following Web Unlocker request:

curl \
    --proxy zproxy.lum-superproxy.io:22225 \
    --proxy-user lum-customer-YOUR_USER-zone-YOUR_ZONE:YOUR_PASSWORD \
    https://toscrape.com/

Use Zyte API as follows:

curl \
    --user YOUR_API_KEY: \
    --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --compressed \
    --data '{"url": "https://toscrape.com", "httpResponseBody": true}' \
    https://api.zyte.com/v1/extract \
| jq --raw-output .httpResponseBody \
| base64 --decode

See Zyte API usage documentation for richer Zyte API examples, covering more scenarios and features.

Parameter mapping#

Web Unlocker only allows to customize 1 per-request parameter of importance when migrating: country.

To set a per-request country, use the geolocation request field, with the desired country code, with uppercase letters.

For example, replace:

curl … --proxy-user lum-customer-YOUR_USER-zone-YOUR_ZONE-country-us:YOUR_PASSWORD …

With:

curl … --data '{…, "geolocation": "US"}' …

For more details, see Geolocation.