Semalt Explains How To Scrape Data Using Lxml And Requests

23.05.2018

Semalt Explains How To Scrape Data
Using Lxml And Requests

When it comes to content marketing, the importance of web scraping cannot be ignored. Also known as web data
extraction, web scraping is a search engine optimization technique used by bloggers and marketing consultants to
extract data from e-commerce websites. Website scraping allows marketers to obtain and save data in useful and
comfortable formats.

Most of the e-commerce websites are commonly written in HTML formats where each page comprises of a well-
preserved document. Finding sites providing their data in JSON and CSV formats is a bit hard and complicated. This
is where web data extraction comes in. A web page scraper helps marketers to pull out data from multiple or single
sources and store it in user-friendly formats.

Role of lxml and Requests in data scraping

In the marketing industry, lxml is commonly used by bloggers and website owners to extract data quickly from
various websites. In most cases, lxml extracts documents written in HTML and XML languages. Webmasters use
requests to enhance the readability of data extracted by a web page scraper. Requests also increase the overall
speed used by a scraper to extract data from single or multiple sources.

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23.05.2018

How to extract data using lxml and requests?

As a webmaster, you can easily install lxml and requests using the pip
install technique. Use readily available data to retrieve web pages. After
obtaining the web pages, use a web page scraper to extract data using an
HTML module and store the les in a tree, commonly known as
Html.fromstring. Html.fromstring expects webmasters and marketers to use bytes as input hence it is advisable to
use page.content tree instead of page.text

An excellent tree structure is of utmost signi cance when parsing data in the form of HTML module. CSSSelect and
XPath ways are mostly used to locate information extracted by a web page scraper. Mainly, webmasters and
bloggers insist on using XPath to nd information on well-structured les such as HTML and XML documents.

Other recommended tools for locating information using HTML language include Chrome Inspector and Firebug.
For webmasters using Chrome Inspector, right click on the element to be copied, select on 'Inspect element' option,'
highlight the script of the element, right-click the element once more, and select on 'Copy XPath.'

Importing data using python

XPath is an element that is mostly used on e-commerce websites to analyze product descriptions and price tags.
Data extracted from a site using the web page scraper can be easily interpreted using Python and stored in human-
readable formats. You can also save the data in sheets or registry les and share it with the community and other
webmasters.

In the current marketing industry, quality of your content matters a lot. Python gives marketers an opportunity to
import data into readable formats. To get started with your actual project analysis, you need to decide on which
approach to use. Extracted data come in different forms ranging from XML to HTML. Quickly retrieve data using a
web page scraper and requests using the above-discussed tips.

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