Data scraping, also known as data extraction, web scraping or parsing, is a method used to extract large amounts of data from websites where the data is extracted and saved to a local file in your computer or to a database in table (spreadsheet) format. The data massives are used for various reasons (i.e. market research) or simply sold to interested parties.
Basic Data Scraping Work Scheme
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Identify Target Website: Determine which website you’ll scrape. Ensure it contains the information you need and that this information can be accessed – some sites have anti-scraping mechanisms.
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Inspect Page Structure: The data on websites is usually nested in HTML tags. Use developer tools (like “Inspect Element” on Chrome) to understand the structure and how your desired data is nested.
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Write Code: Write code for your scraper using programming languages like Python along with libraries such as Beautiful Soup or Scrapy.
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Run Code & Extract Data: Execute your script to extract the required data from the target website.
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Store Data: Save scraped data into desirable format like CSV, JSON, XML etc., for further use or analysis.
Benefits:
- Automates manual work
- Can handle vast volumes of data
- Profitable and scalable business in data-driven world
Potential Pitfalls:
- Legal issues if done without permission / collected data is not public domain
- Websites may block IP addresses they suspect are scraping their content
- Scraped information might not always be up-to-date due to changes on source site
- Requires serious technical background
Typical Tools Used For Scraping
- Import.io – User-friendly tool for non-programmers
- ParseHub – A powerful tool capable of handling JavaScript and AJAX pages
- Octoparse – Both cloud-based and installed versions available.
- WebHarvy– Point-and-click software for extracting specific info quickly.
- GoLogin – Bypassing anti-bot protection and captcha on websites and servers like Cloudflare
- Scrapy – An open-source framework useful for building crawling programs
Remember that while powerful, web scraping should be done responsibly respecting privacy laws/rules set by targeted websites i.e., robots.txt files etc.
