ZDF programmes stay online for a limited window, often stated as a relative period. Our ZDF scraper collects catalogue metadata and resolves each window to an absolute expiry date.
Plans from €169 a month · Free project assessment · Reply within 1 business day
CSV · Excel · JSON · XML · FTP · SFTP · Amazon S3 · Google Cloud
API, JSON feed or CSV, XLSX and JSON files
ScheduleOne-time, monthly, weekly, daily or 3 times a day
ZDF pages, filters, fields and a schedule
Built, monitored and repaired by our team
API, JSON feed or CSV, XLSX and JSON files
ScrapeIt runs the collection as a managed service. You name the genres, programme types or the full catalogue; we enumerate through the published sitemaps, resolve availability windows to absolute dates, type news separately, and hand back CSV, JSON, Excel or a push into your warehouse.
Pacing and proxy rotation are part of the service, and where departures matter we run repeat collection and keep every observation.
We collect published metadata only - never streams, never anything behind a sign in, no viewer data. Every field is publicly available data - everything a visitor can see on ZDF - and we collect it legally.
Programme records carry the title, series and episode identifiers, description, genre, duration, first broadcast date, availability window with its expiry, and the address.
Expiry is resolved to an absolute date at collection. Where a page states a relative window, storing the relative form guarantees a meaningless row later, so the resolution happens while the context is present.
Content type separates drama, documentary, news and sport, since they follow completely different availability rules - news material in particular has much shorter windows than drama.
Series structure is preserved as a hierarchy so that completeness and ordering questions remain answerable.
Every row carries the collection timestamp and the sitemap or section it was discovered through, so coverage can be audited.
Departure feeds are the standard output of any time-limited catalogue: what is leaving in the next week or month, by genre and programme type, built from resolved expiry dates.
Structure comparison against the federated platform is the distinctive use here - two German public broadcasters with different institutional shapes, catalogued on one schema, which makes the effect of structure on output visible.
News volume analysis is worth separating out entirely. Short windows and high turnover make it a different dataset that swamps the rest if merged, and on its own it is a usable record of a public broadcaster's news output.
Limits: metadata only, never streams or anything behind a sign in, no viewer data.
ZDF is one of Germany's national public broadcasters, and its media library carries drama, documentaries, news, sport and a substantial current affairs output.
Unlike the federated platform run by the other side of German public broadcasting, this is a single institution with one commissioning structure, which makes its catalogue a cleaner object to analyse and a useful comparison against a federation.
Like all German public broadcasting it operates availability windows: material stays online for a defined period and then goes. The catalogue is therefore a set of time-limited rights rather than a permanent library, and a snapshot without expiry dates records only what exists today.
Each programme page shows any visitor its title, series and episode, description, genre, duration, first broadcast date and availability window. Sitemaps are published for discovery.
Delivery: CSV, JSON or XLSX files, our API or a JSON feed. MCP server on request.
Full plan detailsMaterial leaves the shelf as its window runs out, and that is the reason to collect it on a schedule rather than once. Expiry dates show what is leaving and when, and repeat collection turns them into a record of how long each genre and programme type stays online.
The second reason is the comparison value. A single national broadcaster's catalogue set beside a federated one answers questions about how institutional structure shapes commissioning that neither answers alone.
The last point is that news material behaves differently from everything else here, with short windows and high volume, and a pipeline that treats it like drama will produce a catalogue dominated by items that vanish within days.
Learn how to use web scraping to solve data problems for your organization
Leveraging advances in technology, the AI-powered web scraper has skyrocketed in demand and is helping to expand capabilities by automating tedious daily tasks and speeding up data collection from thousands of websites several times over.
Web scraping is a method of obtaining web data by extracting it from pages of web resources with the help of a program, that is, in automatic mode. It is used to syntactically convert web pages into more usable forms.
If you specialize in machine learning, you need to feed large amounts of data to the algorithms. Web scraping is the easiest and the most efficient method of collecting the data from all over the Internet.
ScrapeIt is a managed extraction company, not a tool you have to learn. Our team builds the pipeline, follows the published sitemaps, and repairs the collector before a departure feed misses the week that mattered.
You see a sample first, in your format, over the genres you actually track, with expiries resolved and news typed separately so you can judge the structure on real programmes.
Still unsure? Write to info@scrapeit.io
Yes. We collect the programme titles, series and episode identifiers, descriptions, genres, durations, first broadcast dates and availability windows that ZDF shows to any visitor. We collect only publicly available data - everything a visitor can see on ZDF - and we collect it legally.
Because a relative window stored as written becomes meaningless the moment it is saved. The resolution to an absolute date has to happen while the context is present, and it is what makes a departure feed possible afterwards.
Because it has much shorter windows and far higher volume than anything else. Merged in, it dominates the catalogue with items that vanish within days; separated, it is a usable record of a broadcaster's news output.
The federated German platform. Two public broadcasters with different institutional shapes, on one schema, makes visible how structure affects commissioning and availability - a question neither catalogue answers alone.
Yes. The ScrapeIt ZDF API returns programme titles, series and episode identifiers, genres, durations, first broadcast dates and resolved expiry dates as JSON from an endpoint we host, refreshed on the schedule you set. The same data also comes as CSV or XLSX files or straight into your database.
You share your needs, expectations, and desired timeframe. We'll suggest the best solution based on your request and budget.
Our specialists configure the crawlers and extract a sample dataset for your review before proceeding with the full-scale extraction.
Once you approve the sample, we launch the project and start full data collection. We gather, filter, and structure the data for easy use, delivering it on time in your preferred format.
Our team manages ongoing processes, monitors website changes, and supports all data extraction cycles. We can also help integrate data into your systems or create dashboards to simplify analysis.
Tell us which sites, which fields and how often. A couple of lines is enough to start.
ZDF data from €169/month. Free project assessment, reply within 1 business day.