Book Image

Hands-On Web Scraping with Python - Second Edition

By : Anish Chapagain
Book Image

Hands-On Web Scraping with Python - Second Edition

By: Anish Chapagain

Overview of this book

Web scraping is a powerful tool for extracting data from the web, but it can be daunting for those without a technical background. Designed for novices, this book will help you grasp the fundamentals of web scraping and Python programming, even if you have no prior experience. Adopting a practical, hands-on approach, this updated edition of Hands-On Web Scraping with Python uses real-world examples and exercises to explain key concepts. Starting with an introduction to web scraping fundamentals and Python programming, you’ll cover a range of scraping techniques, including requests, lxml, pyquery, Scrapy, and Beautiful Soup. You’ll also get to grips with advanced topics such as secure web handling, web APIs, Selenium for web scraping, PDF extraction, regex, data analysis, EDA reports, visualization, and machine learning. This book emphasizes the importance of learning by doing. Each chapter integrates examples that demonstrate practical techniques and related skills. By the end of this book, you’ll be equipped with the skills to extract data from websites, a solid understanding of web scraping and Python programming, and the confidence to use these skills in your projects for analysis, visualization, and information discovery.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Part 1:Python and Web Scraping
4
Part 2:Beginning Web Scraping
8
Part 3:Advanced Scraping Concepts
13
Part 4:Advanced Data-Related Concepts
16
Part 5:Conclusion

Handling collected data

The availability of data is the main concern before attempting to process it for information and pattern detection. Handling collected data normally refers to gathering data in files and databases in some format and using it effectively and efficiently.

There are many tools and applications that handle data. Choosing the right tool or way of storing and using data shows your professionalism as a developer.

In the following sections, you will be learning about concepts related to handling files and dealing with types of files (JSON and CSV) that are in huge demand in the market and are associated with a large number of IT-driven applications.

Basic file handling

File handling is the core or basic technique for storing and reading data from files. This technique of handling and managing data is used a lot in various programming languages. File handling does not require additional software or tools unless some application extensions are used. Formatting...