Change IP address in selenium

Question

I am in Canada and want to use Selenium to scrape data from a Chinese website. However, since my IP is in Canada, I was always redirected to the Canada site which is different from its orginal Chinese site. How could I visit the original version of the site (which is shown to Chinese)? In other words, how can I pretend that I have a China based IP? Is there a way without having to buy a VPN?

Solution

You can use proxy settings if you have access to a proxy you can connect to.

http://www.seleniumhq.org/docs/04_webdriver_advanced.jsp#using-a-proxy

String PROXY = "localhost:8080";

org.openqa.selenium.Proxy proxy = new org.openqa.selenium.Proxy();
proxy.setHttpProxy(PROXY)
     .setFtpProxy(PROXY)
     .setSslProxy(PROXY);
DesiredCapabilities cap = new DesiredCapabilities();
cap.setCapability(CapabilityType.PROXY, proxy);

WebDriver driver = new InternetExplorerDriver(cap);

Comments

[Florent B.]

Are you sure that the redirection is based on the IP and not on the language in the http headers sent by your browser?

[user5964275]

I don't have a Proxy. Is that necessary?

[David Lai]

Pretty much need a proxy, or a VPN. IP address is done below the application level (network layer).

[teller.py3]

@DavidLai hey david you are interested in talking in private about vpn/ip with selenium?