Web Scraping Workshop: Extracting Data from Websites
Workshop Outline
1. Introduction to Web Scraping
- What is web scraping?
- Why is it useful?
- Legal and ethical considerations
2. Basics of HTML and HTTP
- Understanding HTML structure
- Overview of HTTP requests (GET, POST)
- Inspecting website elements using developer tools
3. Setting Up Your Environment
- Choosing a programming language (e.g., Python, JavaScript)
- Installing necessary libraries (e.g., BeautifulSoup, requests)
4. Scraping Static Websites
- Making HTTP requests
- Parsing HTML with BeautifulSoup (Python) or Cheerio (JavaScript)
- Extracting data from HTML elements (e.g., tags, classes, ids)
5. Handling Dynamic Content
- Introduction to AJAX and dynamic content loading
- Techniques for scraping dynamically rendered pages
- Using tools like Selenium for web scraping
6. Dealing with APIs
- When to use APIs vs. web scraping
- Making API requests
- Parsing JSON responses
7. Data Cleaning and Storage
- Cleaning scraped data (e.g., removing HTML tags, formatting)
- Storing data in CSV, JSON, or databases (SQLite, MongoDB)
8. Advanced Topics
- Handling pagination and multiple pages
- Logging and error handling
- Best practices for efficient and ethical scraping
9. Case Studies and Examples
- Demonstration of scraping popular websites (e.g., IMDb for movie data)
- Practical examples of real-world applications
10. Q&A and Resources
- Addressing common challenges and questions
- Recommended resources for further learning
Workshop Structure
- Duration: Plan for a half-day or full-day workshop depending on the depth of coverage and hands-on exercises.
- Format: Mix lectures with hands-on exercises to reinforce learning.
- Materials: Provide participants with starter code, exercises, and access to resources for continued learning.
Tips for Participants
- Prerequisites: Familiarity with basic programming concepts (variables, loops, functions) is recommended.
- Tools: Ensure participants have access to the necessary software (IDEs, libraries) or provide cloud-based environments.