Web scarping is a term used to refer to the process of extracting data from the World Wide Web. There are also some other terms that refers to the said process, such as, data extraction, screen scraping, web harvesting and so forth. All of the above mentioned words refers to the same process in some way or the other. This was just to make sure that you do not get confused with it.
There are several instances when one may need to scrape data from websites, such as, for news monitoring, price comparison, competitor analysis, and so forth. Being the leading provider of web scarping services, we are going to present you with couple of basic components of scraping data from websites. So, without wasting any time, let us have a look at them in brief:
Professionals, offering web scraping services, develops customized scraper bot that will navigate the targeted website and extract the needed data, such as, text, tables, images, links and much more, from it. There are two ways to scrape data from website, first, with the help of automated software, and second, by hiring web scarping services. In the event that you do not possesses enough knowledge about data scraping, going with the second option would be beneficial for you, and also it will help you to keep your hands clean. What’s more, not all automated software would be able to extract data from every sort of websites. However, the web scraping service providers holds the skill to develop a customized scraper bot as per the need.
Below are some of the basic components that you are expected to be aware of in the event that you are planning to scrape data from websites:
- Language: For web scraping, you are expected to be familiar with three programming languages, i.e. PHP, Python, and Clojure/Clojurescript.
- JavaScript: In the early days of web scraping, you just had to create a HTTP request and parse the HTML response. However, doing so, these days, would provide you with no help. At present, you will be required to deal with websites, which are a mix of standard HTML HTTP request/responses and asynchronous HTTP calls made by the JavaScript portion of the target site.
- Rate limiting: You are ought to be aware of the request limits. This is really very vital in the process of scraping data from websites. In the event that you fail to figure out the request limits, you may get banned.