Web scraping in under 60 seconds: the magic of import.io

This post was written by Rubén Moya, School of Data fellow in Mexico, and originally posted on Escuela de Datos.

Import.io is a very powerful and easy-to-use tool for data extraction that has the aim of getting data from any website in a structured way.
It is meant for non-programmers that need data (and for programmers who don’t want to over complicate their lives).

I almost forgot!! Apart from everything, it is also a free tool (o_O)

The purpose of this post is to teach you how to scrape a website and make a dataset and/or API in under 60 seconds. Are you ready?

It’s very simple. You just have to go to http://magic.import.io; post the URL of the site you want to scrape, and push the “GET DATA” button.
Yes! It is that simple! No plugins, downloads, previous knowledge or registration are necessary. You can do this from any browser; it even
works on tablets and smartphones.

For example: if we want to have a table with the information on all items related to Chew bacca on Mercado Libre (a Latin American version
of eBay), we just need to go to that site and make a search – then copy and paste the link (http://listado.mercadolibre.com.mx/chewbacca)
on Import.io, and push the “GET DATA” button.

You’ll notice that now you have all the information on a table, and all you need to do is remove the columns you don’t need. To do this, just
place the mouse pointer on top of the column you want to delete, and an “X” will appear.

Finally, it’s enough for you to click on “download” to get it in a csv file.
In our example, we have 373 pages with 48 articles each. So this option will be very useful for us.

Good news for those of us who are a bit more technically-oriented! There is a button that says “GET API” and this one is good to, well,
generate an API that will update the data on each request. For this you need to create an account (which is also free of cost).

As you saw, we can scrape any website in under 60 seconds, even if it includes tons of results pages. This truly is magic, no? For more
complex things that require logins, entering sub webs, automatized searches, et cetera, there is downloadable import.io software… But I’ll
explain that in a different post.

Source : http://schoolofdata.org/2014/12/09/web-scraping-in-under-60-seconds-the-magic-of-import-io/

Exploring Web Data Extraction And Its Different Techniques

Web scraping or web data extraction is a distinctive process based on computer software to extract information from different websites. Mostly business organizations are dependent on the web resources for collecting crucial information relating to decision making. With the analysis of such data, they can identify the existing trends of market, details, prices, and product specification. Looking at the time consuming process of manual data extraction, the prominence of data extraction techniques increases.

Different data scraping techniques

Several data extraction techniques are available for the businesses to extract useful information for successful operations. Some of them may include:

    Logical extraction: It comprises logical data extraction of complete source system as well as incremental.
    Physical extraction: This technique involves two different mechanisms for web scrapping that include both online as well as offline.
    HTTP programming: You can also extract data from both dynamic and static websites by implying the technique of socket programming. It allows you to post HTTP requests on the remote web servers.
    Web scraping software: Several software tools are available in the market that serves your individual needs of extracting data with ease. It automatically attempts to recognize the structure of data for a page and extracts the content for further analysis.
    Web scrapping tools: Besides the availability of reliable software, numerous user-friendly web scrapping tools are also helpful in simplifying the entire web scraping process.

Hire a website scrapper

Hiring a suitable website scraper that offers website data extraction services for all your business requirements is an ideal way amongst all other techniques. It provides you filtered and reliable data according to your need for analysis. Some of the major advantages of using website scrapping services may include:

    Automation of data.
    It can retrieve web pages of both static as well as dynamic websites.
    It is also capable of transforming the content into useful information.
    Provides reliable and accurate data.
    It also recognizes several semantic annotations.

Scraping service versus tools

Web scraping services gain more privilege than other tools and software. The basic reason behind this preference is that the service providers are comparatively cheaper than the tools. In fact, they maintain better accuracy and reliability of data.

Summary: It is advisable to look out for suitable web data extraction services instead of any tools or software. This helps in acquiring customized and structured data for your business in legal manner.


 Source : http://www.web-parsing.com/blog/exploring-web-data-extraction-and-its-different-techniques/