Forms and Authentication

Some websites require authentication to access content. This lesson covers handling forms and maintaining login sessions.

Understanding Form Submission

Basic Form Submission

Handling CSRF Tokens

Using Sessions

Complete Login Example

Verifying Login Success

Handling Different Auth Types

Saving and Loading Sessions

Security Considerations

Key Takeaways

• Use requests.Session() to maintain login state
• Extract and include CSRF tokens in form submissions
• Verify login success before scraping protected pages
• Different sites use different auth methods (cookies, tokens, basic auth)
• Save sessions to avoid repeated logins
• Never hardcode credentials - use environment variables
• Check Terms of Service before authenticated scraping