Safari an OReilly Media Company. - Hands-On Web Scraping with Python: Perform advanced scraping operations using various Python libraries and tools such as Selenium, Regex, and others

Copyright 2019 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Commissioning Editor: Sunith Shetty
Acquisition Editor: Aniruddha Patil
Content Development Editor: Roshan Kumar
Senior Editor: Ayaan Hoda
Technical Editor: Sushmeeta Jena
Copy Editor: Safis Editing
Project Coordinator: Namrata Swetta
Proofreader: Safis Editing
Indexer: Tejal Daruwale Soni
Production Designer: Alishon Mendonsa

First published: June 2019

Production reference: 2120619

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham
B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78953-339-2

www.packtpub.com

Packt.com

Subscribe to our online digital library for full access to over 7,000 books and videos, as well as industry leading tools to help you plan your personal development and advance your career. For more information, please visit our website.

• Spend less time learning and more time coding with practical eBooks and Videos from over 4,000 industry professionals

• Improve your learning with Skill Plans built especially for you

• Get a free eBook or video every month

• Fully searchable for easy access to vital information

• Copy and paste, print, and bookmark content

Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.packt.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at customercare@packtpub.com for more details.

At www.packt.com , you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters, and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks.

Anish Chapagain is a software engineer with a passion for data science, its processes, and Python programming, which began around 2007. He has been working with web scraping and analysis-related tasks for more than 5 years, and is currently pursuing freelance projects in the web scraping domain. Anish previously worked as a trainer, web/software developer, and as a banker, where he was exposed to data and gained further insights into topics including data analysis, visualization, data mining, information processing, and knowledge discovery. He has an MSc in computer systems from Bangor University (University of Wales), United Kingdom, and an Executive MBA from Himalayan Whitehouse International College, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Radhika Datar h as more than 5 years' experience in software development and content writing. She is well versed in frameworks such as Python, PHP, and Java, and regularly provides training on them. She has been working with Educba and Eduonix as a training consultant since June 2016, while also working as a freelance academic writer in data science and data analytics. She obtained her master's degree from the Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research and her bachelor's degree from K. J. Somaiya College of Science and Commerce .

Rohit Negi completed his bachelor of technology in computer science from Uttarakhand Technical University, Dehradun. His bachelor's curriculum included a specialization in computer science and applied engineering. Currently, he is working as a senior test consultant at Orbit Technologies and provides test automation solutions to LAM Research (USA clients). He has extensive quality assurance proficiency working with the following tools: Microsoft Azure VSTS, Selenium, Cucumber/BDD, MS SQL/MySQL, Java, and web scraping using Selenium. Additionally, he has a good working knowledge of how to automate workflows using Selenium, Protractor for AngularJS-based applications, Python for exploratory data analysis, and machine learning.

If you're interested in becoming an author for Packt, please visit authors.packtpub.com and apply today. We have worked with thousands of developers and tech professionals, just like you, to help them share their insight with the global tech community. You can make a general application, apply for a specific hot topic that we are recruiting an author for, or submit your own idea.

Web scraping is an essential technique used in many organizations to scrape valuable data from web pages. Web scraping, or web harvesting, is done with a view to extracting and collecting data from websites. Web scraping comes in handy with model development, which requires data to be collected on the fly. It is also applicable for the data that is true and relevant to the topic, in which the accuracy is desired over the short-term, as opposed to implementing datasets. Data collected is stored in files including JSON, CSV, and XML, is also written a the database for later use, and is also made available online as datasets. This book will open the gates for you in terms of delving deep into web scraping techniques and methodologies using Python libraries and other popular tools, such as Selenium. By the end of this book, you will have learned how to efficiently scrape different websites.

This book is intended for Python programmers, data analysts, web scraping newbies, and anyone who wants to learn how to perform web scraping from scratch. If you want to begin your journey in applying web scraping techniques to a range of web pages, then this book is what you need!

,