Web Scraping: Ruby vs Python

Softwarecosmos28 Jul, 2024Technology

Web scraping is a powerful technique used to extract data from websites. This guide explores what web scraping is, its applications, techniques, and best practices. What is Web Scraping? Web scraping involves automated methods to retrieve information from websites. It converts web pages into structured data that can be analyzed and used for various purposes. How Does Web Scraping Work? Sending a Request: A web scraper sends a request to a web server to access a specific URL. Receiving Data: The server responds with the HTML content of the page. Parsing the HTML: The scraper analyzes the HTML structure to extract relevant data. Storing Data: Extracted data is then stored in a structured format like CSV, JSON, or a database. Applications of Web Scraping Web scraping has numerous applications across different industries: Data Analysis Businesses use scraped data for market research, competitor analysis, and trend spotting. This helps them make informed decisions.