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

Preface

Web scraping is used to scrape and collect data from the web. The data collected from scraping is used to generate and identify patterns in the information.

In today’s technical – or, more precisely, data-driven – fields and markets, quick and reliable information is in very high demand. Data collected in CSV or JSON format and from databases is processed to generate error-free and high-quality data, which is then analyzed, trained using machine learning algorithms, and plotted. The resulting information is carried forward for decision-making or supportive business intelligence-related tasks.

The chapters of this book are designed in such a way that each section helps you to understand certain important concepts and practical experiences. If you complete all the chapters of the book, then you will gain practice in scraping data from desired websites and analyzing and reporting data. You will also learn about the career paths and jobs related to web scraping, data analysis, reporting, visualization, and machine learning.