Extracting Data from the Web
Learn how to automate data extraction using Ubuntu's powerful command-line tools and Python libraries.
1 Set Up Python Environment
sudo apt install python3-pip
pip install beautifulsoup4 requestsThis installs Python 3 with pip and the essential web scraping tools.
2 Create Basic Scraper
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
url = 'https://example.com'
response = requests.get(url)
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser')
links = [a.get('href') for a in soup.find_all('a')] print(links)This script fetches all links from an example page. Update the URL and tag selectors for your target site.
Troubleshooting Tips
Error: Cannot access website content
If you get access errors, try adding headers to mimic a browser request:
headers = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'}
response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
Output is missing data items
Check for anti-scraping protections. Use time.sleep() to slow requests and try rotating proxies.
Error: Cannot access website content
If you get access errors, try adding headers to mimic a browser request:
headers = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'}
response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)Output is missing data items
Check for anti-scraping protections. Use time.sleep() to slow requests and try rotating proxies.
Share Your Project!
Have a web scraping use case? Discuss it on our community forums!
→ Forum Discussion