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Babita B. Published: May 10, 2023 · 6 minutes read

Data scraping has always been in the game, be it for research, analysis, or automation purposes.

This usually means data is the blood flow of every industry, and we keep looking to collect data from websites as fast as we can. Going manually to get this job done is quite similar to finding a needle in a ship.

And here comes the role of — “Web scraping”!

Web scraping works best to extract data from websites without going “red-handed.” With web scraping, you can collect large amounts of data from the internet easier and faster. Web scraping Python is one of the most popular programming languages used for web scraping due to its ease of use and powerful libraries such as BeautifulSoup and Scrapy.

Want to make more sense of it? This guide spotlights everything you need to know about web scraping with Python.

So without any further ado, let’s get into it!

What Is Web Scraping?

Web scraping is a technique used to scrape data from websites. It involves writing a script or Python program to automate the process of collecting data from a website. To build more understanding here, read the comprehensive documentationPython web scraping can be used to extract various types of data, such as text, images, and videos.

Is Web Scraping Legal?

It depends. The legality of web scraping depends on where you are doing the scraping and with whom you are doing it. Many websites don’t allow any kind of scraping, so it is always advisable to first check if your project can be done legally before proceeding with it.

To know whether a web page allows web scraping or not, you can look at the site’s “robots.txt” file. This Python file is available by appending “/robots.txt” to any URL with which you want to scrape a website.

Python – What Sets It Perfect for Web Scraping?

python web scraper/web scraping project

There is a big set of reasons that classified Python as the best way to extract data from websites, such as:

Easy to Learn and Use: Python has a simple and intuitive syntax that is easy to learn and use, making it a good choice for beginners. Plus, it also comes with an extensive user community with an extraordinary array of online resources.

Large Libraries: With the efficient use of Python’s libraries, including Beautiful Soup, Scrapy, and Requests, web scraping has become more convenient in its use. These libraries have the tools for the extraction of data from HTML, XML, and other web building blocks.

Flexibility: Since Python has a convenient integration with other tools and technologies, it makes a versatile choice to use it for a wide range of applications, including web scraping.

Scalability: Python is scalable, meaning it can create a platform where the data can be handled even for larger amounts. And this function is demanded by web scraping, as there can be a great deal of data uploaded to the websites.

Cross-Platform: Python is a cross-platform language that can operate across multi-dimensional web platforms such as Windows, Mac, and Linux. Thus, making it simpler to deploy web scraping scripts on various systems.

Web Scraping With Python

Python is a popular programming language used for web scraping. It has powerful libraries such as BeautifulSoup and Scrapy that make web scraping easy and efficient. Here’s a step-by-step Python web scraping tutorial on how to use Python for web scraping:

Step 1: Choose a Website to Scrape

The first step in web scraping with Python is to choose a website to scrape. It’s important to choose a website that allows web scraping and has the data you need. Some websites have strict policies against web scraping, so it’s important to check the terms of use before starting the scraping process.

Step 2: Inspect the Website

Once you have chosen a website, the next step is to inspect the website. This involves examining the website’s HTML code to identify the data you want to extract. You can use your browser’s developer tools to inspect the website’s HTML code.

Step 3: Install Python Libraries

The next step is to install the necessary Python libraries for web scraping. Two popular libraries for web scraping with Python are BeautifulSoup and Scrapy. You can install these libraries using pip, which is a package manager for Python.

Step 4: Write the Web Scraping Code

After installing the necessary libraries, the next step is to write the web scraping code. You can use BeautifulSoup or Scrapy to write the web scraping code. Here’s an example of how to use:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

url = ‘https://www.example.com’
response = requests.get(url)
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, ltml.parser’)

title = soup.find( ).text
print(title)

This code first sends a request to the website and gets the HTML response. It then uses BeautifulSoup to parse the HTML and extract the title of the webpage.

Step 5: Run the Web Scraping Code

The final step is to run the web scraping code. You can run the code in a Python IDE or on the command line. The data extracted from the website can be stored in a CSV file or a database for further analysis.

Web Scraping Best Practices

Web scraping can be a powerful tool, but it’s important to follow best practices to ensure that you are scraping websites ethically and legally. Here are some best practices for web scraping:

  1. Check the Terms of Use: Before scraping a website, check the terms of use to ensure that web scraping is allowed. Some websites have strict policies against web scraping.
  2. Respect Website Limits: Some websites may limit the number of requests you can make per day. It’s important to respect these limits to avoid overloading the website’s servers.
  3. Use Throttling: Throttling is the process of limiting the number of requests you make to a website. This can help prevent overloading the website’s servers and avoid being blocked.

Libraries Used for Web Scraping

There are several libraries that are commonly used for web scraping in Python:

BeautifulSoup: A popular library used for web scraping that makes it easy to parse HTML and XML documents.

Scrapy: A powerful and flexible web scraping framework that allows you to write spiders to crawl websites and extract data.

Requests: A simple Python library that allows you to send HTTP/1.1 requests using Python.

Selenium: A web testing library that can be used for web scraping by automating web browsers to interact with web pages.

Pandas: A library commonly used for data analysis that can also be used for web scraping, as it has tools for reading HTML and XML documents.

PyQuery: A library that provides a jQuery-like syntax for parsing HTML and XML documents.

Lxml: A fast and efficient library for parsing HTML and XML documents.

These are just a few of the many libraries available for web scraping using Python. The library choice often depends on the project’s specific requirements and the developer’s preferences.

Installing Dependencies for Web Scraping

To install dependencies for web scraping in Python, you can use a package manager such as pip, which is the most popular package manager for Python. Here are the general steps to install dependencies:

  1. Open a terminal or command prompt.
  2. Make sure that Python and pip are installed on your system. You can check by running the following commands:

Python -version
Pip -version

If you get an error, you may need to install Python and/or pip.

  1. Use pip to install the necessary libraries. For example, to install BeautifulSoup, you can run the following command:

Pip install beautifulsoup4

To install other libraries, replace “beautifulsoup4” with the name of the library you want to install.

  1. Once the libraries are installed, you can import them into your Python code and use them for web scraping.

Note that some libraries may have additional dependencies that need to be installed separately. You can usually find this information in the library’s documentation.

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FAQs

What Is Python Web Scraping?

Web scraping with Python is a process of extracting data from websites.

What Are the Common Challenges in Web Scraping?

Common challenges in web scraping include anti-scraping measures and handling dynamic content.

How Do I Handle Dynamic Content When Web Scraping With Python?

To handle dynamic content when web scraping with Python, use techniques like selenium, import webdriver and BeautifulSoup. To get the best web scraping  APIs, visit here.