Does Guzzle support proxy servers for web scraping?

Guzzle is a PHP HTTP client that simplifies the process of sending HTTP requests and integrating with web services. While Guzzle itself is not specifically designed for web scraping, it is capable of handling HTTP requests that can be used for scraping purposes. And yes, Guzzle does support proxy servers.

When you're using Guzzle to send HTTP requests, you can specify a proxy that Guzzle will use for the outgoing requests. This can be useful when you need to scrape web content anonymously or when you need to bypass certain IP-based restrictions.

Here's an example of how to use a proxy server with Guzzle:

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

use GuzzleHttp\Client;

$client = new Client();

$response = $client->request('GET', 'http://httpbin.org/ip', [
    // Specify the proxy as a string URL
    'proxy' => 'tcp://proxy.example.com:8125',
]);

echo $response->getBody();

In the above example, Guzzle sends a GET request to http://httpbin.org/ip using a proxy located at proxy.example.com on port 8125.

Guzzle also allows you to specify different proxies for different protocols and also to provide an array of proxies:

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';

use GuzzleHttp\Client;

$client = new Client();

$response = $client->request('GET', 'http://httpbin.org/ip', [
    'proxy' => [
        'http'  => 'tcp://http-proxy.example.com:8125', // Use this proxy with "http"
        'https' => 'tcp://https-proxy.example.com:9124', // Use this proxy with "https"
        // 'no' can be used to specify a list of host names that should not be proxied to
        'no' => ['.example.com', 'httpbin.org'], // Don't use a proxy with these
    ],
]);

echo $response->getBody();

For web scraping, you should also consider other aspects such as the site's robots.txt rules, rate limiting, and potential legal issues. Using a proxy can help mitigate some of these concerns but doesn't grant immunity against them.

Remember to always use web scraping responsibly and ethically, respecting the terms of service of the website you're scraping and the legal requirements of your jurisdiction.