What is Web Scraping?
Web scraping is the automated process of extracting data from websites. Instead of manually copying information, you write programs that fetch web pages and parse their content.
Why Web Scraping?
Web scraping enables you to:
- Collect data at scale - Gather thousands of data points in minutes
- Monitor changes - Track prices, availability, or content updates
- Aggregate information - Combine data from multiple sources
- Research and analysis - Build datasets for analysis or machine learning
- Automate repetitive tasks - Stop copying and pasting manually
How Web Scraping Works
The basic web scraping workflow:
- Send HTTP request - Request a web page from a server
- Receive HTML response - Get the page's HTML content
- Parse the HTML - Navigate the document structure
- Extract data - Pull out the specific information you need
- Store results - Save data to files or databases
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Common Use Cases
E-Commerce
- Price comparison across retailers
- Product availability monitoring
- Competitor analysis
Research
- Academic data collection
- Market research
- Sentiment analysis from reviews
Real Estate
- Property listings aggregation
- Price trend analysis
- Location-based insights
Job Markets
- Job posting aggregation
- Salary research
- Skills demand tracking
Tools We'll Learn
Throughout this course, we'll master:
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
| requests | Making HTTP requests |
| BeautifulSoup | Parsing HTML |
| Selenium | Browser automation |
| Playwright | Modern browser automation |
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Key Takeaways
- Web scraping automates data extraction from websites
- It follows a request → parse → extract → store workflow
- Python has excellent libraries for web scraping
- Scraping is used across many industries for data collection
- This course will teach you practical, production-ready skills