Apache StormCrawler

How to use Apache StormCrawler in a web scraping pipeline

Apache StormCrawler supplies components for building a crawler on Apache Storm. It fits a pipeline in which URL discovery, fetching and parsing need to operate as a coordinated stream rather than as a standalone download script.

A practical workflow

1. Start with seed URLs and define the crawler topology, fetch policy and scope. Decide where URL status and the extracted output will be stored.
2. Connect the crawl components so that fetched pages produce parsed content and discovered links, with those links feeding subsequent scheduling decisions.
3. Send the fields or documents you need to a separate storage or search destination, retaining crawl status so that failed and revisited URLs can be handled deliberately.

When it fits

It fits teams already able to operate Storm and wanting to customize a continuously running crawl. The topology becomes the place to separate collection work from downstream indexing or enrichment.

Boundaries

StormCrawler is an SDK and set of components, not a hosted scraping API. You still operate the runtime and choose integrations, parsers and crawl policies. Rendering browser-only application content may require an additional component; a distributed topology alone does not make extracted data complete.