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

HTML <form> processing using Python

Form processing has various titles and functions, such as search, filter, login, registration, submission, and verification. In this section, we will explore http://quotes.toscrape.com/search.aspx, as shown in Figure 6.2, and process or use the forms available on the page to extract or filter out the results, based on a choice of options (Author or Tag):

Figure 6.2: The search form (Author and Tag)

Figure 6.2: The search form (Author and Tag)

Important note

We need to investigate the available <form> tag, the options or form elements that exist, and the resulting pages as they appear on form submission. It’s also advisable to explore form-related actions using DevTools, as this will help you to understand the flow of systems, links, availability, and resources such as HTTP headers, cookies, and payload.

During page analysis, we found that only a single form, named filterform, exists, and options are available for the Author name only; Tag...