Professional Web Scraping with Java

Name: Professional Web Scraping with Java
Rating: 4.3 (199 reviews)

Learn how to scrape data from any static or dynamic / AJAX web page using Java in a short and concise way.

Created byPatrick Meier, EMA GmbH

Last updated 8/2018

English

What you'll learn

Have a solid understanding of web scraping with Java
Beeing able to scrape practically any web page (static AND dynamic / AJAX) though you learn the concepts behind web scraping
Download, parse and extract data from websites with Jsoup
Call web APIs in Java with Unirest
Export your data as CSV or JSON
Build web scrapers that stay undetected and do not get blocked or banned

Course content

6 sections • 18 lectures • 1h 23m total length

Introduction: Course overview and requirements1:53
Get an overview of the course and show you the requirements needed to proceed.

What is a static web page?0:52
In this lecture we discuss what a static web page is.
Concept: how to scrape static web pages2:00
In this lecture you learn the concept behind scraping static web pages. We look at the concrete steps needed to scrape practically any static page out there. A live example is provided at the end of this section...
Jsoup: the jQuery for Java5:45
We introduce the Jsoup library. It helps downloading, parsing and extracting elements from a page using CSS selectors. It has a lot of similarities of jQuery - so prior knowledge of jQuery is helpful but not necessary.

Also we develop a simple example program using this library...
Example: scraping the top 10 Google search results14:03
In this example we build a web scraper that gets the top 10 Google search results for any search query and prints the title and url of each search result to the console. Later we store the results in a simple text file.

What is a dynamic / AJAX web page?1:55
In this lecture we discuss what a dynamic / AJAX web page is and how it differs from a static one.
Concept: how to scrape dynamic / AJAX web pages2:35
In this lecture you learn the concept behind scraping dynamic / AJAX web pages. Later we show you how to actually apply this concept to a concrete example.
Making HTTP Requests with Unirest11:20
In this lecture you learn how to make HTTP Requests with the Unirest Java library. We develop a simple live example where you can see the most important features for web scraping in action.
Example: scraping results from peoplefinders.com14:59
In this example we scrape the results from peoplefinders.com which are loaded dynamically via AJAX requests.
Bonus: Proxycrawl to scrape dynamic pages0:17
Dealing with WebSockets6:39
In this lecture you will learn everything needed to deal with WebSockets effectively. We discuss what WebSockets exactly are, how they work from a 10.000 feet view and most importantly how to scrape data from them based on a real life example from a news site.

Export your data as CSV2:10
In this lecture we export the data from the Google top 10 search results example as CSV for further processing. You can open it in Numbers, Excel or Open Office. There you can do all kinds of sorting and filtering which is really useful.
Export your data as JSON4:22
In this lecture we export the data from the Google top 10 search results example as JSON for further processing.

How to stay undetected2:22
You will learn how to become invisible and hide traces of beeing a web scraper. This will help you avoid getting blocked or banned.

Bonus: in the resource section you find an undercover web scraper that builds upon the google scraper from the previous lecture. You can use this as a foundation for creating your own scrapers....
Bonus: Overview of Proxycrawl5:37
In this lecture you will get an overview of Proxycrawl and learn what to use it for and how it works. We will also look into the backend of it and explain everything.
Bonus: Example using Proxycrawl for peoplefinders.com5:07
In this lecture we use the same example from the previous lecture and scrape data from peoplefinders.com - except this time we do it using Proxycrawl so you can see and understand the difference between the two approaches and won't be distracted by using another website for demonstration.
Also included is the full source code with a ready to use class to integrate in your own scrapers if you like to use proxycrawl...

Requirements

You should already be familiar with Java and Maven at a basic to medium level (the course will not show you how to setup Java, Maven or an IDE)
You should be familiar with HTML/CSS and know how to use your browser's developer tools
You should know about CSS selectors, though we use them for scraping static web pages
Prior knowledge of jQuery helps you getting started faster with Jsoup, though this is not required
You should know what a web API and AJAX is (basic level is enough)

Description

In this short and concise course you will learn everything to get started with web scraping using Java.

You will learn the concepts behind web scraping that you can apply to practically any web page (static AND dynamic / AJAX).

Course structure

We start with an overview of what web scraping is and what you can do with it.

Then we explain the difference in scraping static pages vs dynamic / AJAX pages. You learn how to classify a website in one of the two categories and then apply the right concept in order to scrape the data you want.

Now you will learn how to export the scraped data either as CSV or JSON. These are some popular formats that can be used for further processing.

Unfortunately many websites try to block scrapers or sometimes you just do not want to be detected. In the section going undercover you will learn how to stay undetected and avoid getting blocked.

At the end of the course you can download the full source code of all the lectures and we discuss an outlook to some advanced topics (private proxies, cloud deployment, multi threading ...). Those advanced topics are covered in a follow up course I am going to teach.

Why you should take this course

Stop imagining you can scrape data from websites and use the skills for your next web project, you can do it now.

Stay ahead of your competition
Be more efficient and automate tedious, manual tasks
Increase your value by adding web scraping to your skill set

Enroll now!

Who this course is for:

Anyone with an interest in learning web scraping and understanding the concepts
Anyone who likes a short and concise course
This course is NOT an introduction to Java
This course will NOT show you how to setup your development environment
This course is intended to get you started with web scraping. Very advanced topics (e.g. private proxies, cloud deployment, multi threading) are discussed but not implemented in this course. I will do an an advanced / enterprise level course on this separately...
Windows, Mac, or Linux PC

Professional Web Scraping with Java

What you'll learn

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Course content

Course Introduction1 lecture • 2min

Scraping static web pages4 lectures • 23min

Scraping dynamic / AJAX web pages6 lectures • 38min

Exporting your data2 lectures • 7min

Going undercover3 lectures • 13min

Conclusion2 lectures • 1min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: