Wat Is Web Scraping

What Is Web Scraping Tools
What Is Web Scraping Using Rpa
What Is Web Scraping

Mar 09, 2020 Web Scraping refers to the process of extracting data from a website or specific webpage. This can be done either manually or by using software tools called web scrapers. These software tools are usually preferred as they are faster, more powerful and therefore more convenient. Web scraping opens up a host of possibilities when it comes to generating leads for your business. A business looking for new clientele can scrape the sites of potential clients, looking for content that indicates they have a need for a specific product or service. Web scraping can also be used to gain access to lists of leads on the internet. Quickly send and receive WhatsApp messages right from your computer.

Richard Stallman's Personal Site

I continue to be the Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project.
This is my long-term commitment and I plan to continue.
Support me against a campaign of hatred

Send comments/questions about the search engine to: rms at gnu dot org

Talks

RSS site feed for the most recent political notes and new material.
This is the personal web site of Richard Stallman.
The views expressed here are my personal views, not those of the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project.
For the sake of separation, this site has always been hosted elsewhere and managed separately.

If you want to send me GPG-encrypted mail, do not trust key servers! Some of them have phony keys under my name and email address, made by someone else as a trick. See gpg.html for my real key.

Join a Friday climate strike.
This page is made by scraping Fridays for Future so you can get theinformation without running any Javascript code. I would be very gladif they made the information on their own site accessiblefrom the Free World; then we could simply refer people to their siteand do without the scraping etc.

I am looking for a few more volunteers to help install new political notes on the site. If you'd like to help me in this way, please write to rms at gnu period org.

Is your bank pressuring you to use biometric ID? If so, please write to rms at gnu dot org. It could be useful if you document what is happening.

Please donate to the Free Software Foundation to support its work for your freedom.

'They' is plural — for singular antecedents, use singular gender-neutral pronouns.

The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.

(in India) make and sell buttons that say, 'DON'T BE TRACKED PAY CASH', in English and/or a local language, to resist the campaign against cash. Talk with a local company that makes buttons, buy a batch of 50 to 500 buttons for a quantity price, then sell them for 2 or 3 times that price.
find articles about games that lure and pressure users into spending a lot of money on competitive advantages, or letting their children do so. I've concluded this is a form of malicious functionality, and I want to make a list to add to https://gnu.org/malware/. If you know of an article, please email me the URL.
get info about Delta face recognition.
Delta Airlines' web site says clearly that using face recognition to for departures is optional.
However, there are reports that in the airport they cover this up.
Would someone flying on Delta out of Atlanta please record the announcements about face recognition for checkin and boarding? And what the checkin agent says to you about rejecting the face recognition. Also please take photos of any signs that talk about the matter. Then please send me email about what you saw/heard.
send me examples of how proprietary programs have been designed to cause programmed obsolescence of products.
send me examples of how proprietary programs have been designed to be addictive.
If you know of a bank in the US that charges less than ten dollars for incoming wire transfers, please tell me about it. I can't do online banking, since most US banks require customers to run nonfree apps or Javascript code for that, so I would need to open an account in some other way. Therefore, it would be best if the bank had an office in the Boston area. However, I'd be interested in whatever banks you can recommend even if they are not near me.
Write a program to scrape fridaysforfutureusa.org and post the practical info about finding climate strike rallies on another web site which makes that information accessible without running JavaScript code.
I would like to publicize these events, as well as attend sometimes myself.
volunteer to post videos of my talks on audio-video.gnu.org.
develop a Firefox front end to search the Internet Archive with Javascript disabled (or LibreJS active).
browse various sites and show me items that I ought to see and link to. If you would like to help me in this way, please write to rms at gnu dot o r g.
write site-specific Firefox extensions or local scripts to operate specific web sites.
help maintain and operate savannah.gnu.org.
experiment to find good ways to attach fruits to a Grav-mass tree.
help web sites put free licenses on their Javascript code.

What Is Web Scraping Tools

Civil Liberties Minute:

graphic by Susan Henson
Americans, you may wish to copy this icon to your own page, as a way of showing what patriotism means to you.

Urgent action items

US citizens: call on Congress to pass the NO BAN Act. It would prohibit religious discrimination in regard to entering the US.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to support H.R. 2509 / S. 1139, which would eliminate the mechanism for the military draft. Specifically, it would do these things:
- Repeal the Military Selective Service Act (thereby eliminating Presidential authority to order men to register with the Selective Service System for a possible military draft and eliminating criminal penalties for failure or refusal to register);
- Abolish the Selective Service System (thereby ending contingency planning by the SSS for the Health Care Personnel Delivery System or any other form of special-skills draft);
- Prohibit all other Federal agencies from imposing civil sanctions (denial of federal student financial aid, federally-funded jobs, etc.) for nonregistration or using nonregistration as a basis for other adverse determinations (denial of naturalization as a U.S. citizen, etc.);
- 'Preempt' (and thereby override and prohibit) all state sanctions for nonregistration (denial of drivers' licenses, state financial aid, state jobs, etc.); and
- Preserve the rights of conscientious objectors under other laws and regulations (such as applicants for reassignment to noncombatant duties or discharge from the military on the basis of conscientious objection).
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Washington DC statehood bill.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: support Biden’s decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to advocate an increased estate tax.
US citizens: call on Congress to End the War on Yemen.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Disney not to use face recognition.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to commit to voting No on any bill that funds militarism at over 90% of the current level.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: support the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act.
US citizens: call on the Senate to end the filibuster so as to pass federal voting rights and democracy protections.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your senators and congresscritter to support the ICBM Act, which would transfer funds from ICBM development to vaccine development.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on world leaders to protect the climate, and help those who will face hardship soon.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: support the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to support UN sanctions against Erik Prince.
US citizens: call on Biden to Cancel Student Debt.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Medicare for All Act of 2021.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Boycott Chevron, in the name of Steven Donziger.

Recording of Guantanamero

Listen to the recording of Guantanamero, a protest song written in Spanish. The recording is in Ogg Vorbis format. To install an Ogg Vorbis player, see the FSF's Ogg Players page.

There Ought to Be a Law

It should be a crime to knowingly approach a person while maskless inside a building or vehicle.
*The pandemic has taken surveillance of workers to the next level.*
The extreme of this is represented by the Amazon warehouse, where a worker's every move is controlled by the computer system. This is one of many reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
Unfortunately, surveillance of workers is not limited to Amazon. I think states should pass laws to limit surveillance of workers. It should cover independent contractors as well as employees.
The law should completely forbid demanding that workers run any specific software on their own computers (keep in mind that portable phones are computers); the employer who wants that must furnish the computer at no charge.
A hundred years ago, having your face photo circulated as a suspect could direct persecution at you — for instance, making it impossble to get a job.
Now it can cause you to be arrested randomly for walking down the street.
If stores use face recognition inside the store, they should not be allowed to use photos for matching against people in the store except for photos they have taken in that store, and photos of people convicted of theft and fraud.
The corrupter has pardoned his former agent, Michael Flynn, who was convicted for lying to the FBI about what he did for the corrupter.
This is a corrupt practice. I think we need to limit the president's power to pardon so that presidents cannot do this in the future.

More items where there ought to be a law.

Quotes

Here are some quotations that I particularly like.

Most recent Political Notes and News Items

(RSS Feed)

See the current pol-notes page for more.

(You may need to scroll down for more text if there is blank space in this column.)

The four factors of the apocalypse:
global heating, global hating,
global eating, global mating.

[More Cartoons]

Copy this button (courtesy of R.Siddharth) to express your rejection of Facebook.

Support the Green Party

Republican Election Rigging Tactics

Evoting

The Olympics

Why everyone has a reason to fear massive surveillance

Churchandstate.org.uk

E-books

Don't use Facebook

Facebook's face recognition demonstrates a threat to everyone's privacy. I therefore ask people not to put photos of me on Facebook; you can do likewise.

Of course, Facebook is bad for many other reasons as well.

Boycott Harry Potter Books, Movies, etc.

Internet Music EULAS

Business Supremacy Treaties

Countries to Stay Away From

No national identity cards

I'd like to make a list of countries that do not require a national identity card, and have no plans to adopt one. If you live in or have confirmed knowledge of such a country, please send email to rms at gnu.org.

Here's my list of countries with no national ID cards and no plans for one: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK. Australia's previous government tried to institute national ID cards, but the Labor government dropped the plan.

India has mostly finished imposing a national biometric ID number in a grand act of oppression.

Switzerland has national ID cards which are optional, but they or some other government ID card are needed for some purposes.

Iceland doesn't have ID cards as such, but they have ID numbers that citizens are forced to use frequently. For example, the national ID number is often required to rent a video or use a gym.

Denmark issues non-photo ID cards with a 'person number', and many services use this card to identify people.

Norway will impose a national biometric ID card.

Ireland - national ID card by stealth.

ACLU: the five dangers of national ID cards.

Wikipedia has a list of identity card policies by country.

Borders

Stay away from certain countries because of their bad immigration policies.

Flight connections

Avoid flight connections in these airports because of their treatment of passengers.

The Lifelong Activist

People often ask how I manage to continue devoting myself to progressive activism (such as the free software movement) for years without burning out. The best way I can answer is by recommending a book, The Lifelong Activist by Hillary Rettig.

I disagree with the book on one theoretical point in the last part of the book: we shouldn't think of political activism as being marketing and sales, because those terms refer to business, and politics is something much more important than mere business. However, this doesn't diminish the value of the book's practical advice about borrowing techniques from marketing and sales.

Disclosure: I am friends with the author.

Bob Chassell

Writing (mostly science fiction) by my friend Bob Chassell who recently died.

Solidarity Economy and Free Software

Falkvinge articles

I have reposted some of Rick Falkvinge's articles. As posted on his site, you can't see them in a browser without running some nonfree Javascript code which is apparently non-free. These versions show the same text, without the obstacle.

Long-term action items

Political Articles

These are my political articles that are not related to the GNU operating system or free software. For GNU-related articles, see the GNU philosophy directory. You can also order copies of my book, Free Software, Free Society, 3rd edition', signed or not signed.

Necessary Changes in Society (March 2021)
On the Firing of Jeffrey Toobin (November 2020)
The Broken Trust Model of Policing Police (October 2020)
An Extinction Rebellion activist comments about the London police by Clark Killick (October 2020)
What sort of laws would give us real privacy? (December 2019)
My Talk at Microsoft (September 2019)
Surveillance Ordinance (November 2018)
How the Ramayana endorses caste bias (April 2018)
Better Genderless Pronouns in English (April 2018)
A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe. (April 2018)
What Mary Had (May 2017)
Anonymous internet payments using pay phones (Apr 2017)
When people are conscripted by the DMCA into the War on Sharing. (Dec 2016)
If you feel your organization needs a 'presence' in Facebook. (Dec 2016)
How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?
Yes, You Have Something to Fear. (August 2016)
A proposal for resolving the dispute over the South China Sea. (July 2016)
Is duckduckgo.com partially enforcing the 'celebrity threesome injunction'? (May 2016)
Adapting the Marseillaise to the greatest threat to civilization.
Proposing the Logo Sea Turtle — for Whales (October 2015)
Controlling When the Cameras Record (August 2015)
A few words to Greece (June 2015)
Fixing Too Big To Fail (Apr 2015)
What I said about Hrant Dink in my talks in Turkey (Apr 2015)
Earth under attack from planet Koch.
Fine government contractors for hiring ex-officials (Feb 2015)
Suggestion to the target of a witch hunt (Feb 2015)
Nonexistence (Feb 2015)
The Thermocene Epoch (Feb 2015)
Digital Voting. (Jan 2015)
My letter asking the judge not to sentence Jeremy Hammond to prison. (Jan 2015)
It is a bad idea to have computers count the votes in public elections.
The patent system is, at best, not worth keeping. (February 2014)
Why We Need A State (November 2013)
We can put an end to 'too big to fail' with an innovative tax that also defeats corporate tax-dodging. (August 2013)
Exxon and the Letter Exx. (April 1, 2013)
Fixing too big to fail (February 2013)
Why internet music 'sale' is a bad deal. (January 2013)
On-line education is using a flawed Creative Commons license (September 2012) French Translation
Redistributable Scientific Publishing (April 2012)
My Doctor's Office Asked me to Lie (August 2011)
UK extreme pornography law.
My criticism of the The Zeitgeist Movement. The Venus Project is more or less the same idea.
The states need to form a union.
Additional Political Articles are on a separate page

Political notes

'Those who profess to favor freedom, yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.'

Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Letter to an associate, 1849

Here are notes about various issues I care about, usually with links to more information. The current notes are here. For all previous notes, see this page.

See this page for information on efforts to maintain links in the political notes.

Political notes about the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy are being archived on their own page.

Media/Press/Bios

Richard Stallman's bio and publicity photos, and other things of interest to the press, have been moved to a separate page.

Travel experiences

How it happened that I planned speeches at Israeli universities, then cancelled them.
My visit to Machu Picchu
Stories about visits to Tikal and Greece

Photos about my travels

Photos of me working on my laptop at various places
All of my photos, organized by location, from my trips.
Photos people like best, among those I have taken and posted here.
myvisit to Switzerland in May 2003 (and the same photos at the original photographer's site.)
Some pictures from Vaasa where I slipped on icy ground in the airport, broke my elbow, and gave my speech by telephone from the hospital bed
my trips to Greece
In Singapore in March 2001, a lovely parrot (50k jpeg) became enamored of me, while others enjoyed my recorder playing (91k jpeg)
my visit to China in May/June 2000. I also visited Tibet unawares, because nobody told me that JiuZhaiGou was part of Tibetan territory annexed by China since the conquest
my visit to Brazil: some from Rio de Janeiro and some from Porto Alegre where the Software Livre 2000 event was held.
A photo of me by Blake Livingston (may be used under CC-BY-SA).

Scientific Links

Homeopathy debunked, and thoroughly, as pseudoscience.

Some humor

The Free Software Song, by Richard M. Stallman. You can listen to a performance of the song: Free Software Song performed by Thor Here is a variant of this song called 'The Free Firmware Song'.

A song parody, Colors of the Lisp, by Jefferson Carpenter.

Earth under attack from planet Koch.

On doxing, and how to spell it.

Here I am wearing my 'power tie'.

Wine snobs get their comeuppance.

Here I am struggling to open a bottle of water.

My application to an join Marian Henley's ex-boyfriends list.

My funny poetry and song parodies.

My Puns in English (Little Leaguer, August 2019).

My Puns in Spanish (New pun: Apostasía April 2019)

My Puns in French (New pun: Microsoft à l'école July 2019)

My Puns in Italian (New pun: Quale pesce fa starnutire? New 10/2018)

My Puns in German (New 02/2016)

Linguistic Swifties (Now with: Wintu, Penutian, Cochiti, Taos, and Towa.)

--Saint IGNUcius-- The Church of Emacs will soon be officially listed by at least one person as his religion for census purposes.

There are no godfathers in the Church of Emacs, since there are no gods, but you can be someone's editorfather.

Stallman Does Dallas: 'I have to warn you that Texans have been known to have an adverse reaction to my personality…'

I found a funny song about the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act (officially the Sonny Bono Copyright Act) which extended copyright retroactively by 20 years on works made as early as the 1920s.

If you are a geek and read Spanish, you will love Raulito el Friki, who said 'Hello, world!' immediately after he was born. Here's an archive of this now-defunct comic strip.

Sleeping with Stallman at MIT.

Un malentendido gracioso.

ESR's favorite programming language: Objectivist C.

The huns and the writs.

No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)

Fiction

Made for You (December 2012) (local copy) Esperanto translation

A science fiction story: Jinnetic Engineering (in Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, French, and Italian).

Books

My book of essays about the philosophy of Software Freedom, is available from the GNU Press.

Stallman on Love

Non-Political Articles

Avec des chapeaux French song parody.

My radio program of Music from Georgia, originally broadcast on WUOG in Athens, Georgia on Oct 13, 2014.

A proposal for gender neutrality in Spanish, suitable for both speech and writing.

On Hacking: In June 2000, while visiting Korea, I did a fun hack that clearly illustrates the original and true meaning of the word 'hacker'.

Predicting the attack on Pearl Harbor

Thanks

I would like to thank:

Positive Internet for hosting this web site.
Graziano Sorbaioli for improving the layout of the main page.

Please send comments on these web pages to rms at gnu period org.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of any of the photos in the photos subdirectory is permitted under the Creative Commons Noderivs license version 3.0 or later. You can copy and redistribute the photo of me playing music to the butterfly under the Creative Commons Noderivs Nocommercial license version 3.0 or later. Any other photos of me in this (the toplevel) directory may be copied and redistributed under the Creative Commons Noderivs license version 3.0

Some websites can contain a very large amount of invaluable data.

Stock prices, product details, sports stats, company contacts, you name it.

If you wanted to access this information, you’d either have to use whatever format the website uses or copy-paste the information manually into a new document. Here’s where web scraping can help.

What is Web Scraping?

Web scraping refers to the extraction of data from a website. This information is collected and then exported into a format that is more useful for the user. Be it a spreadsheet or an API.

Although web scraping can be done manually, in most cases, automated tools are preferred when scraping web data as they can be less costly and work at a faster rate.

But in most cases, web scraping is not a simple task. Websites come in many shapes and forms, as a result, web scrapers vary in functionality and features.

If you want to find the best web scraper for your project, make sure to read on.

How do Web Scrapers Work?

Automated web scrapers work in a rather simple but also complex way. After all, websites are built for humans to understand, not machines.

First, the web scraper will be given one or more URLs to load before scraping. The scraper then loads the entire HTML code for the page in question. More advanced scrapers will render the entire website, including CSS and Javascript elements.

Then the scraper will either extract all the data on the page or specific data selected by the user before the project is run.

Ideally, the user will go through the process of selecting the specific data they want from the page. For example, you might want to scrape an Amazon product page for prices and models but are not necessarily interested in product reviews.

Lastly, the web scraper will output all the data that has been collected into a format that is more useful to the user.

Most web scrapers will output data to a CSV or Excel spreadsheet, while more advanced scrapers will support other formats such as JSON which can be used for an API.

What Kind of Web Scrapers are There?

Web scrapers can drastically differ from each other on a case-by-case basis.

For simplicity’s sake, we will break down some of these aspects into 4 categories. Of course, there are more intricacies at play when comparing web scrapers.

self-built or pre-built
browser extension vs software
User interface
Cloud vs Local

Self-built or Pre-built

Just like how anyone can build a website, anyone can build their own web scraper.

However, the tools available to build your own web scraper still require some advanced programming knowledge. The scope of this knowledge also increases with the number of features you’d like your scraper to have.

On the other hand, there are numerous pre-built web scrapers that you can download and run right away. Some of these will also have advanced options added such as scrape scheduling, JSON and Google Sheets exports and more.

Browser extension vs Software

In general terms, web scrapers come in two forms: browser extensions or computer software.

Browser extensions are app-like programs that can be added onto your browser such as Google Chrome or Firefox. Some popular browser extensions include themes, ad blockers, messaging extensions and more.

Web scraping extensions have the benefit of being simpler to run and being integrated right into your browser.

However, these extensions are usually limited by living in your browser. Meaning that any advanced features that would have to occur outside of the browser would be impossible to implement. For example, IP Rotations would not be possible in this kind of extension.

On the other hand, you will have actual web scraping software that can be downloaded and installed on your computer. While these are a bit less convenient than browser extensions, they make up for it in advanced features that are not limited by what your browser can and cannot do.

User Interface

The user interface between web scrapers can vary quite extremely.

For example, some web scraping tools will run with a minimal UI and a command line. Some users might find this unintuitive or confusing.

On the other hand, some web scrapers will have a full-fledged UI where the website is fully rendered for the user to just click on the data they want to scrape. These web scrapers are usually easier to work with for most people with limited technical knowledge.

Some scrapers will go as far as integrating help tips and suggestions through their UI to make sure the user understands each feature that the software offers.

Cloud vs Local

From where does your web scraper actually do its job?

Local web scrapers will run on your computer using its resources and internet connection. This means that if your web scraper has a high usage of CPU or RAM, your computer might become quite slow while your scrape runs. With long scraping tasks, this could put your computer out of commission for hours.

Additionally, if your scraper is set to run on a large number of URLs (such as product pages), it can have an impact on your ISP’s data caps.

Cloud-based web scrapers run on an off-site server which is usually provided by the company who developed the scraper itself. This means that your computer’s resources are freed up while your scraper runs and gathers data. You can then work on other tasks and be notified later once your scrape is ready to be exported.

This also allows for very easy integration of advanced features such as IP rotation, which can prevent your scraper from getting blocked from major websites due to their scraping activity.

What are Web Scrapers Used For?

By this point, you can probably think of several different ways in which web scrapers can be used. We’ve put some of the most common ones below (plus a few unique ones).

Scraping site data before a website migration
Scraping financial data for market research and insights

The list of things you can do with web scraping is almost endless. After all, it is all about what you can do with the data you’ve collected and how valuable you can make it.

Read our Beginner's guide to web scraping to start learning how to scrape any website!

The Best Web Scraper

So, now that you know the basics of web scraping, you’re probably wondering what is the best web scraper for you?

The obvious answer is that it depends.

The more you know about your scraping needs, the better of an idea you will have about what’s the best web scraper for you. However, that did not stop us from writing our guide on what makes the Best Web Scraper.

What Is Web Scraping Using Rpa

Of course, we would always recommend ParseHub. Not only can it be downloaded for FREE but it comes with an incredibly powerful suite of features which we reviewed in this article. Including a friendly UI, cloud-based scrapping, awesome customer support and more.

What Is Web Scraping

Want to become an expert on Web Scraping for Free? Take ourfree web scraping courses and become Certified in Web Scraping today!