Getting Started with Python Web Scraping

Python is a high-level programming language used for general-purpose programming. It has a design philosophy which emphasizes code readability and a syntax which allows programmers to express concepts in fewer lines of code than possible in languages such as C++ or Java.

This video course is a rich collection of recipes that will come in handy when you are scraping a website using Python, addressing your usual and unusual problems while scraping websites by diving deep into the capabilities of Python’sweb scraping tools such as Selenium, BeautifulSoup, and urllib2. The video will start with showing how to use selenium module for scraping by setting up a web driver, debugging with the Console and downloading files and streamlining with a Headless Browser (PhantomJS). The video will then move on to demonstrate how to do parsing with Beautifulsoup which would include introduction to the BeautifulSoupObjects, Nested Selectors and Regular Expressions Basics and how to do UTF-8 Encoding. The video will finally end by showing how to do fetching with urlib2 by using the developer tools Network tab, how to bypass the browser and retrieve files.

By The end of this video, you will be successfully able to understand the in-depth capabilities of python web scraping tools.

What You Will Learn

• Use the Selenium module and scrape with Selenium
• Find out how to set up a web driver
• Perform debugging with the console and download files
• Learn to work with Nested selectors and regular expression basics
• Discover how to perform parsing with BeautifulSoup
• Understand authentication with Wireshark
• Master the use of URL Query Strings and HTTP Requests (GET and POST)
• Implement streamlining with headless browser

Audience

his video is for Python developers and web analysts who want to improve their web scraping skills in Python. It is ideal for those who are looking for reference guide they can use to solve any challenges encountered while web scraping in Python.

About The Author

Charles Clayton: Charles Clayton is a sole proprietor of crclayton technologies co and an independent web developer. He is an experienced developer and Python specialist in Python web scraping solutions and tools such asSelenium, BeautifulSoup,and urllib2. He has 2 years of experience as a Reliability Engineer with West frazweer.