FB Marketplace plugin fails to search about hyacinth HOT 3 CLOSED

Interesting, I can access that search results page (https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/melbourne/lamps/?sortBy=creation_time_descend&exact=false) without logging in here on US east coast, but since I noticed the search was for Melbourne, I tried a VPN to Australia and got the login page.

Edit: It's probably a rate-limiting thing, not regional (or it's both). I got the login page with a US VPN as well.

I am hesitant to add authentication, just because if user accounts are detected as web scrapers they will probably get banned pretty fast. The error should definitely be handled better though, I'll add it to my list - thanks for the suggestion.

from hyacinth.

Hm, I didn't know marketplace ever required authentication to search. Do you know if this is a rate-limiting thing? I was able to complete searches in my tests, but I only ever tried with a single search at a time.

from hyacinth.

Well spotted, thanks for pointing that out. In that case, it looks like it will be hard to run this on the cloud -- I will need to either authenticate or route my requests through a VPN on my home router. But it sounds like that's just the nature of FB scraping.

from hyacinth.