Web scraping allows programmers to extract large amounts of data from websites in an automated fashion. The extracted data can then be manipulated, analyzed, and visualized, leading to insights that are not immediately apparent from the raw data.
However, in order to perform web scraping, one needs to understand the structure of the website being scraped, where the relevant data is located, and how to access, extract, and transform that data. In this article, we will focus on MechanicalSoup, a Python library for web scraping that provides fast and intuitive access to websites without requiring extensive knowledge of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript.
Using MechanicalSoup for Web Scraping
Understanding the Login Form
Before we can scrape a website that requires users to log in, we need to understand how the login process works. Typically, a login form consists of a few HTML elements that allow users to enter their username and password, along with a “submit” button that sends the login information to the server.
To inspect the login form, we need to use a web browser’s developer tools, which allow us to see the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code that makes up the website. Upon inspecting the login form, we can see that it consists of an HTML