Python Web Scraping

Learning PathSkills: Web Scraping, HTTP Requests, Data Parsing

Python Web Scraping Category Artwork

Web scraping is about downloading structured data from the Web, selecting some of that data, and passing along what you selected to another process. With this learning path, you’ll learn the core Python technologies and skills that you need to build your own web scraper.

Python Web Scraping

Learning Path ⋅ 9 Resources

Laying the Foundation for Web Scraping

Before you jump into web scraping, it’s important to brush up on some foundational skills, like making HTTP requests and understanding HTML and CSS.

Title image for HTTP Requests With Python's urllib.request (Python's urllib.request for HTTP Requests)

Course

HTTP Requests With Python's urllib.request

In this video course, you'll explore how to make HTTP requests using Python's handy built-in module, urllib.request. You'll try out examples and go over common errors, all while learning more about HTTP requests and Python in general.

Title image for Making HTTP Requests With Python (Python’s Requests Library (Guide))

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Making HTTP Requests With Python

The requests library is the de facto standard for making HTTP requests in Python. It abstracts the complexities of making requests behind a beautiful, simple API so that you can focus on interacting with services and consuming data in your application. This course shows you how to work effectively with requests, from start to finish.

Title image for HTML and CSS Foundations for Python Developers (HTML and CSS for Python Developers)

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HTML and CSS Foundations for Python Developers

There's no way around HTML and CSS when you want to build web apps. Even if you're not aiming to become a web developer, knowing the basics of HTML and CSS will help you understand the Web better. In this video course, you'll get an introduction to HTML and CSS for Python programmers.

Getting Started With Web Scraping

Now that you’ve learned some foundational skills, you’re ready to start web scraping!

Title image for Web Scraping With Beautiful Soup and Python (Beautiful Soup: Build a Web Scraper With Python)

Course

Web Scraping With Beautiful Soup and Python

In this course, you'll walk through the main steps of the web scraping process. You'll learn how to write a script that uses Python's requests library to scrape data from a website. You'll also use Beautiful Soup to extract the specific pieces of information that you're interested in.

Title image for Exercises Course: Introduction to Web Scraping With Python (Web Scraping in Python)

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Exercises Course: Introduction to Web Scraping With Python

In this course, you'll practice the main steps of the web scraping process. You'll write a script that uses Python's requests library to scrape and parse data from a website. You'll also interact with HTML forms using tools like Beautiful Soup and Mechanical Soup to extract specific information.

Title image for Web Scraping With Scrapy and MongoDB (Web Scraping With Scrapy and MongoDB)

Tutorial

Web Scraping With Scrapy and MongoDB

This tutorial covers how to write a Python web crawler using Scrapy to scrape and parse data, and then store the data in MongoDB.

Handling Response Data

In web scraping, you end up with lots of response data. Next up, you’ll learn what to do with it.

Title image for Working With JSON Data in Python (Working With JSON Data in Python)

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Working With JSON Data in Python

Learn how to work with Python's built-in json module to serialize the data in your programs into JSON format. Then, you'll deserialize some JSON from an online API and convert it into Python objects.

Title image for Reading and Writing CSV Files (Python CSV Parsing)

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Reading and Writing CSV Files

This short course covers how to read and write data to CSV files using Python's built in csv module and the pandas library. You'll learn how to handle standard and non-standard data such as CSV files without headers, or files containing delimeters in the data.

Automating Your Web Scraping Process

Finally, you’ll learn how to use a headless browser to automate the web scraping process.

Title image for Modern Web Automation With Python and Selenium (Modern Web Automation with Python and Selenium)

Tutorial

Modern Web Automation With Python and Selenium

Your guide to learning advanced Python web automation techniques: Selenium, headless browsing, exporting scraped data to CSV, and wrapping your scraping code in a Python class.

Congratulations on completing this learning path! If you’d like to continue to develop your skills for interacting with web data, then check out the web scraping topic on Real Python.

Or maybe you’d like to explore different ways to organize and work with a variety of data. In that case, these learning paths have got you covered:

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