Web Scraping with Python: Collecting More Data from the Modern Web

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From the Publisher

From the Preface

What Is Web Scraping?

The automated gathering of knowledge from the web is sort of as outdated as the web itself. Although net scraping isn’t a brand new time period, in years previous the observe has been extra generally referred to as display scraping, knowledge mining, net harvesting, or related variations. General consensus as we speak appears to favor net scraping, so that’s the time period I take advantage of all through the ebook, though I additionally consult with applications that particularly traverse a number of pages as net crawlers or consult with the net scraping applications themselves as bots.

In concept, net scraping is the observe of gathering knowledge by way of any means apart from a program interacting with an API (or, clearly, by way of a human utilizing an internet browser). This is mostly completed by writing an automatic program that queries an internet server, requests knowledge (often in the type of HTML and different information that compose net pages), after which parses that knowledge to extract wanted info.

In observe, net scraping encompasses all kinds of programming strategies and applied sciences, corresponding to knowledge evaluation, pure language parsing, and data safety. Because the scope of the area is so broad, this ebook covers the elementary fundamentals of net scraping and crawling in Part I and delves into superior subjects in Part II. I counsel that every one readers rigorously examine the first half and delve into the extra particular in the second half as wanted.

About This Book

This ebook is designed to serve not solely as an introduction to net scraping, however as a complete information to accumulating, remodeling, and utilizing knowledge from uncooperative sources. Although it makes use of the Python programming language and covers many Python fundamentals, it shouldn’t be used as an introduction to the language.

If you don’t know any Python in any respect, this ebook could be a little bit of a problem. Please don’t use it as an introductory Python textual content. With that stated, I’ve tried to maintain all ideas and code samples at a beginning-to-intermediate Python programming stage so as to make the content material accessible to a variety of readers. To this finish, there are occasional explanations of extra superior Python programming and basic laptop science subjects the place acceptable. If you’re a extra superior reader, be happy to skim these elements!

If you’re searching for a extra complete Python useful resource, ‘Introducing Python’ by Bill Lubanovic (O’Reilly) is an efficient, if prolonged, information. For these with shorter consideration spans, the video sequence ‘Introduction to Python’ by Jessica McKellar (O’Reilly) is a wonderful useful resource. I’ve additionally loved ‘Think Python’ by a former professor of mine, Allen Downey (O’Reilly). This final ebook specifically is right for these new to programming, and teaches laptop science and software program engineering ideas alongside with the Python language.

Technical books are sometimes in a position to give attention to a single language or know-how, however net scraping is a comparatively disparate topic, with practices that require the use of databases, net servers, HTTP, HTML, web safety, picture processing, knowledge science, and different instruments. This ebook makes an attempt to cowl all of those, and different subjects, from the perspective of ‘knowledge gathering.’ It shouldn’t be used as an entire therapy of any of those topics, however I consider they’re coated in sufficient element to get you began writing net scrapers!

Publisher‏:‎O’Reilly Media; 2nd version (April 24, 2018)
Language‏:‎English
Paperback‏:‎308 pages
ISBN-10‏:‎1491985577
ISBN-13‏:‎978-1491985571
Item Weight‏:‎1.17 kilos
Dimensions‏:‎7 x 0.65 x 9.19 inches