# Custom Headers

If you want to pass your own custom headers to scrape a website then you can do that by using **`custom_headers=true`** paramter. This parameter will let you pass your own headers to the request constructor. This can be helpful when you are trying to scrape a website that requires login cookies or something similar. There is absolutely no extra cost to using this parameter.

{% hint style="info" %}
Our API already manages headers and it is designed to increase the success rate of scraping any website. Only use this feature when either you want to scrape something which is behind an authentication wall or you are expecting something in response headers.
{% endhint %}

### Usage

{% tabs %}
{% tab title="cURL" %}

```bash
curl --header "X-customheader: bar" \
    "https://api.scrapingdog.com/scrape?api_key=5e5a97e5b1ca5b194f42da86fr444356&url=http://httpbin.org/anything&custom_headers=true"
```

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Python" %}

```python
import requests

url = "https://api.scrapingdog.com/scrape"
api_key = "5e5a97e5b1ca5b194f42da86fr444356"


headers = {
    "X-customheader": "bar"
}

params = {
    "api_key": api_key,
    "url": "http://httpbin.org/anything",
    "custom_headers": "true"
}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, params=params)

if response.status_code == 200:
    print(response.text)
else:
    print(f"Request failed with status code: {response.status_code}")

```

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Nodejs" %}

```javascript
const axios = require('axios');

const url = 'https://api.scrapingdog.com/scrape';
const api_key = '5e5a97e5b1ca5b194f42da86fr444356';
const custom_headers = 'true';

const headers = {
  'X-customheader': 'bar',
};

const params = {
  api_key: api_key,
  url: 'http://httpbin.org/anything',
  custom_headers: custom_headers,
};

axios
  .get(url, { headers, params })
  .then((response) => {
    if (response.status === 200) {
      console.log(response.data);
    } else {
      console.log(`Request failed with status code: ${response.status}`);
    }
  })
  .catch((error) => {
    console.error('Error:', error);
  });

```

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="PHP" %}

```php
<?php

$api_key = '5e5a97e5b1ca5b194f42da86fr444356';
$url = 'http://httpbin.org/anything';
$custom_headers = true;

$ch = curl_init();
$custom_headers = ['X-customheader: bar'];

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "https://api.scrapingdog.com/scrape?api_key=$api_key&url=$url&custom_headers=$custom_headers");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $custom_headers);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

if ($response === false) {
    echo 'cURL error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    echo $response;
}

curl_close($ch);
?>

```

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Ruby" %}

```ruby
require 'net/http'

url = URI.parse("https://api.scrapingdog.com/scrape?api_key=5e5a97e5b1ca5b194f42da86fr444356&url=http://httpbin.org/anything&custom_headers=true")

request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url)
request['X-customheader'] = 'bar'

response = Net::HTTP.start(url.host, url.port, use_ssl: true) do |http|
  http.request(request)
end

puts response.body

```

{% endtab %}

{% tab title="Java" %}

```java
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.URL;

public class CurlToJava {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            String url = "https://api.scrapingdog.com/scrape?api_key=5e5a97e5b1ca5b194f42da86fr444356&url=http://httpbin.org/anything&custom_headers=true";
            URL obj = new URL(url);
            HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) obj.openConnection();

            // Set custom header
            connection.setRequestProperty("X-customheader", "bar");

            int responseCode = connection.getResponseCode();
            System.out.println("Response Code: " + responseCode);

            BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream()));
            String inputLine;
            StringBuilder response = new StringBuilder();

            while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) {
                response.append(inputLine);
            }
            in.close();

            System.out.println(response.toString());
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

```

{% endtab %}
{% endtabs %}


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.scrapingdog.com/web-scraping-api/request-customization/custom-headers.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.