Learn web scraping and crawling techniques to access unlimited data from any web source in any format. With this practical guide, you’ll learn how to use Python scripts and web APIs to gather and process data from thousands—or even millions—of web pages at once.

Ideal for programmers, security professionals, and web administrators familiar with Python, this book not only teaches basic web scraping mechanics, but also delves into more advanced topics, such as analyzing raw data or using scrapers for frontend website testing. Code samples are available to help you understand the concepts in practice.

Learn how to parse complicated HTML pages
Traverse multiple pages and sites
Get a general overview of APIs and how they work
Learn several methods for storing the data you scrape
Download, read, and extract data from documents
Use tools and techniques to clean badly formatted data
Read and write natural languages
Crawl through forms and logins
Understand how to scrape JavaScript
Learn image processing and text recognition

About the Author

Ryan Mitchell is a Software Engineer at LinkeDrive in Boston, where she develops their API and data analysis tools. She is a graduate of Olin College of Engineering, and is a Masters degree student at Harvard University School of Extension Studies. Prior to joining LinkeDrive, she was a Software Engineer working on web scraping and data analysis at Abine.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.