If programming is magic, then web scraping is surely a form of wizardry. By writing a simple automated program, you can query web servers, request data, and parse it to extract the information you need. This thoroughly updated third edition not only introduces you to web scraping but also serves as a comprehensive guide to scraping almost every type of data from the modern web.

Part I focuses on web scraping mechanics: using Python to request information from a web server, performing basic handling of the server's response, and interacting with sites in an automated fashion. Part II explores a variety of more specific tools and applications to fit any web scraping scenario you're likely to encounter.

Parse complicated HTML pages
Develop crawlers with the Scrapy framework
Learn methods to store the data you scrape
Read and extract data from documents
Clean and normalize badly formatted data
Read and write natural languages
Crawl through forms and logins
Scrape JavaScript and crawl through APIs
Use and write image-to-text software
Avoid scraping traps and bot blockers
Use scrapers to test your website

About the Author

Ryan Mitchell is a senior software engineer at GLG, as well as a speaker and author.

An expert in web scraping, web security, and data science, Ryan has hosted workshops and spoken at many events, including Data Day and DEF CON. She has also taught web programming and data science and consulted on coursework at a variety of institutions. Ryan holds a master's degree in software engineering from Harvard University Extension School and is currently a senior software engineer at GLG where she creates data analysis tools. Ryan is the author of Web Scraping with Python (O'Reilly), as well as Instant Web Scraping with Java (Packt Publishing).