scraperapi-php-sdk

ScraperAPI — PHP SDK Best Practices

Requires: PHP 7.0+, Composer, composer require scraperapi/sdk, SCRAPERAPI_API_KEY environment variable.

Setup

<?php
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';
use ScraperAPI\Client;

$client = new Client(getenv('SCRAPERAPI_API_KEY'));

Never hardcode the API key. Read it from the environment every time.

Basic Usage

// Simple GET — returns HTML string via ->raw_body
$html = $client->get("https://example.com/")->raw_body;
echo $html;

// With a single parameter
$html = $client->get("https://example.com/", ["render" => true])->raw_body;

// With multiple parameters
$html = $client->get(
    "https://example.com/",
    [
        "render"       => true,
        "country_code" => "us",
    ]
)->raw_body;

Parameters are passed as an associative array. ->raw_body extracts the HTML string from the response object.

Decision Guide

Situation	Approach
Single URL, synchronous	$client->get($url, $params)->raw_body
Page loads content via JavaScript	Add "render" => true
Site blocks datacenter proxies	Add "premium" => true
Toughest anti-bot protection	Add "ultra_premium" => true
Multi-step / paginated flow on same domain	Use "session_number"
POST a form or JSON body to target	$client->post($url, $options)->raw_body
20+ URLs or batch jobs	Use async endpoint via cURL or Guzzle
Supported platform (Amazon, Google, etc.)	Use structured data endpoint directly

Parameter Reference

Rendering

// Render JavaScript before returning HTML
// Use when: page is a React/Vue/Angular SPA, or scrape returns empty/partial content
// Cost: +10 credits
$html = $client->get("https://spa-site.com/", ["render" => true])->raw_body;

// Wait for a specific DOM element (requires render: true)
$html = $client->get("https://spa-site.com/", [
    "render"            => true,
    "wait_for_selector" => ".product-list",
])->raw_body;

// Screenshot (auto-enables rendering)
$html = $client->get("https://example.com/", ["screenshot" => true])->raw_body;