5 Best Web Scraping Courses & Tutorials

 Web Scraping and Data

Unfortunately, most websites do not provide users with simple access to their public data. For example, Amazon does not provide you with a way to download a spreadsheet with all the details of the products you’re interested in to make a better buying decision.

After all, Amazon doesn’t want you to make a good buying decision, they just want you to buy something.

What is Web Scraping?

Web scraping refers to the extraction of data from a website into a new format. In most cases, the data from a website is extracted into an Excel sheet or JSON file.

Web scraping is usually an automated process done by a piece of software, although it can still be done manually. As a result, most people prefer to use web scraping software to save time and money.

While it might sound simple, web scraping can be used in numerous ways to unlock value from many different websites.

Want to learn more about web scraping? Read our definite guide on web scraping and its uses.

What is Web Scraping Used For?

Due to its versatility, web scraping can be used in various scenarios. We could spend hours reviewing each use case, but here are some of the most common.

Lead Generation

Imagine that you are working for a company that sells and distributes dental equipment for dentists. As a result, you might be interested in creating a database or spreadsheet with information about every dentist in your city.

You could create this spreadsheet manually, one by one, or you could use a web scraper to scrape a website like Yellow Pages or Yelp for information on dentist offices. Including their business names, addresses, phone numbers and more.

Interested in lead generation? Read our guide on how to power your lead generation efforts with web scraping.

Competitor Analysis / Market Research

Let’s say you are looking into starting your own e-commerce business by selling smartphone cases online. Therefore, building a database of similar product listings can provide you with insights on how to position and price your products.

For example, you could scrape Amazon and eBay listings for phone cases in order to build your database of competitor products.

Interested in competitor analysis? Read our guides on how to scrape Amazon or eBay data for competitive analysis.

Statistical Analysis

Many people use web scraping to generate datasets they can later use for statistical analysis.

For example, you could use a web scraper to extract stock prices for specific companies on a daily basis and get a better sense of how a specific industry is performing overall.

On the other hand, you could also use web scraping for more “fun” statistical analysis, such as scraping sports stats that will fuel your fantasy league choices.

Other Uses

As we mentioned earlier, there are many more uses for web scraping, including:

• Social Media scraping for sentiment analysis
• Scraping for archival purposes
• Scraping websites for research purposes
• Scraping your own site before a website migration
• Scraping data for comparison shopping

What is the Best Web Scraper?

This question is asked a lot.

The true answer is that it depends.

Given your project’s needs and specifications, one web scraper might be better than another. We’ve actually written an in-depth guide on what makes the best web scraper and what are some must-have features.

5 Best Web Scraping Courses & Tutorials

1. Modern Web Scraping with Python using Scrapy Splash Selenium (Udemy)

The internet is indeed one of the largest sources of information. Though there are numerous web scraping tools available online, this course has been designed to help you create your own and design the functionalities as per your need. Commence from scratch and cover topics like CSS selectors, XPath, request cookies, scraping methodologies, building, and hosting spiders. The lessons use the latest version of Python, Splash, and Scrapy.

 

Key USPs 

•  Theoretical and practical concepts are well balanced throughout the classes.
•  Learn to extract data from JavaScript sites using Selenium and Splash.
•  Work on five hands-on projects.
•  Gain best practices from the instructor.
•  Get answers to your queries from the instructor.
•  111 Lectures + 32 Articles + 8 Downloadable resources + Full lifetime access

Duration: 8 hours

Rating: 4.7 out of 5

2. Scrapy: Powerful Web Scraping & Crawling with Python (Udemy)

If you have a solid fundamental idea of Python and a beginner level of idea of Scrapy, then in this program, you will have the opportunity to capitalize on that. Warm-up by developing a fundamental spider, deploying them, and logging into sites using Scrapy. Once you get a clear idea, the lectures will take you to more advanced techniques and end the journey by saving the results in databases.

Key USPs-

• Thorough guidance is provided to go through the installation.
• Get an overview of the syntax of XPath.
• Demonstrations based on real-life examples and practical scenarios.
• Q&A board is available to discuss your queries.
• 86 Lectures + 18 Articles + 41 Downloadable resources + Full lifetime access

Duration: 10.5 hours

Rating: 4.4 out of 5

3.  Web Scraping in Nodejs (Udemy)

This hands-on tutorial on web scraping gets you started with Nodejs, Puppeteer, Cheerio, and demonstrates techniques to scrape websites. Explore how you can reverse engineer sites and find their APIs. Following this, the classes focus on creating a scraper that iterates every hour. Finally, all the extracted outputs can be saved in MongoDB or CSV files.

Key USPs-

• Practice along with the videos.
• Extract information from websites with and without passwords.
• Present your results using a React frontend.
• Connect with the mentor for help.
• Bonus content is available that covers some intriguing topics.
• 136 Lectures + 5 Articles + 1 Downloadable resource + Full lifetime access

Duration: 10 hours

Rating: 4.6 out of 5

4. Learn Web Scraping with NodeJs – The Crash Course (Udemy)

Prerequisites for enrolling in this program include prior knowledge of JavaScript ES6 Syntax and familiarity with jQuery and CSS selectors. In the lectures, you will build a strong foundation in extracting relevant data from websites. Look into each step beginning from the factors that have to be considered while beginning to build the scraper, challenges faced during the development and deployment. After the completion of the tutorial, you will have all the relevant knowledge and confidence to create a scraper that tends to your requirements.

Key USPs

• Work with Nodejs, Puppeteer, and other popular tools.
• Overview of setup and other necessary information are covered in the introductory videos.
• Determine the suitable tools required based on the platform you are working on.
• User interactions can be automated by leveraging the power of Nodejs.
• Extract data from some of the platforms containing huge chunks of information.
• 50 Lectures + 32 Downloadable resource + Full lifetime access

Duration: 7 hours                                                                                     

Rating:  4.7 out of 5

5. Web Scraping in Python (DataCamp)

If you are interested in exploring the concept of scraping websites, then this platform will help you in learning the ropes and building a solid foundation. Begin with understanding the utilities of this skill and the structure of HTML. After the introductory module, the classes will discuss the XPath syntax, selectors, CSS locators, and responses. In the end, you will get the opportunity to create a web crawler using Scrapy.

Key USPs

• Techniques taught can be applied to Scrapy as well as other Python libraries.
• Create tools that can be used for parsing HTML code.
• Gain the knowledge to go for more advanced certifications.
• Complete the 56 exercises that accompany the lessons.
• The first section can be accessed for free.

Duration: 4 hours                                                                                     

Rating: 4.4 out of 5