Web Scraping Basics Python

By Al Sweigart. Free to read under a Creative Commons license.

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Web Scraping Basics Python For Beginners

New Book: 'Beyond the Boring Stuff with Python'

Introduction By definition, web scraping refers to the process of extracting a significant amount of information from a website using scripts or programs. Such scripts or programs allow one to extract data from a website, store it and present it as designed by the creator. The data collected can also be part of a larger project that uses the extracted data as input. Previously, to extract data.
Dec 02, 2020 List Comprehensions in Python will help you improve your python skills with easy to follow examples and tutorials. Click here to view code examples.
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Web scraping is the process of gathering information from the Internet. Even copy-pasting the lyrics of your favorite song is a form of web scraping! However, the words “web scraping” usually refer to a process that involves automation. Some websites don’t like it when automatic scrapers gather their data, while others don’t mind. Web Scraping is one of the important methods to retrieve third party data automatically. In this article, I will be covering the basics of web scraping and use two examples to illustrate the 2 different ways to do it in Python.

You've read a beginner resource like Automate the Boring Stuff with Python or Python Crash Course, but still don't feel like a 'real' programmer? Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python covers software development tools and best practices so you can code like a professional.

Second Edition of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

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Preview the first 15 of the course's 50 videos for free on YouTube.

'The best part of programming is the triumph of seeing the machine do something useful. Automate the Boring Stuff with Python frames all of programming as these small triumphs; it makes the boring fun.'
- Hilary Mason, Founder of Fast Forward Labs and Data Scientist in Residence at Accel

'I'm having a lot of fun breaking things and then putting them back together, and just remembering the joy of turning a set of instructions into something useful and fun, like I did when I was a kid.'
- Wil Wheaton, WIL WHEATON dot NET

Practical programming for total beginners.

If you've ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you?

In Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you'll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand-no prior programming experience required. Once you've mastered the basics of programming, you'll create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation to:

Search for text in a file or across multiple files
Create, update, move, and rename files and folders
Search the Web and download online content
Update and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any size
Split, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFs
Send reminder emails and text notifications
Fill out online forms

Step-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks.

Don't spend your time doing work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you've never written a line of code, you can make your computer do the grunt work. Learn how in Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.

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The Automate the Boring Stuff with Python Programming online course on Udemy covers most of the content of the book. If you'd prefer a video format for learning to program, you can use this link to get a 70% discount. You will have lifetime access to the course content and can post questions to the course's forums.

You can preview the first 15 of the course's 50 videos on YouTube for free.

Additional Content

About the Author

Al Sweigart is a software developer and teaches programming to kids and adults. He has written several books for beginners, including Scratch Programming Playground, Cracking Codes with Python, Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, and Making Games with Python & Pygame

Support the author by purchasing the print/ebook bundle from No Starch Press or separately on Amazon.