{"id":6218,"date":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/royadata.io\/blog\/?p=6218"},"modified":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T14:47:43","slug":"selenium-web-scraping-python","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/royadata.io\/blog\/selenium-web-scraping-python\/","title":{"rendered":"Web Scraping Using Selenium and Python: The Step-By-Step Guide for Beginner (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For dynamic sites richly built with JavaScript, Selenium is the tool of choice for extracting data from them. Come in now and read this article to learn how to extract data from web pages using Selenium.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"Web\n<\/picture>\n

The easiest websites to scrape data from are static pages that all content is downloaded upon request. Sadly, these types of sites are gradually fading out, and dynamic websites are gradually taking over.<\/p>\n

With dynamic sites, all content on a page is not provided upon loading a page \u2013 the content is dynamically added after specific JavaScript events, which pose a different problem to scraping tools<\/a> designed for static websites. Fortunately enough, with tools like Selenium<\/a>, you are able to trigger JavaScript events and scrape any page you want, no matter how JavaScript-rich a page is.<\/p>\n

With Selenium, you are not tied to a single language like other tools. Selenium has support for Python<\/a>, Ruby, Java, C#, and JavaScript<\/a>. In this article, we will be making use of Selenium and Python to extract web data<\/a>. Before we go into that in detail, it is wise if we look at Selenium and instances when you should make use of it.<\/p>\n\n

<\/span>Selenium WebDriver \u2013 an Overview <\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n

Selenium was not initially developed for web scraping<\/a> \u2013 it was initially developed for testing web applications but has found its usage in web scraping. In technical terms, Selenium or, more appropriately, Selenium WebDriver is a portable framework for testing web applications.<\/p>\n

In simple terms, all Selenium does is to automate web browsers. And as the team behind Selenium rightfully put it, what you do with that power is up to you! Selenium has support for Windows, macOS, and Linux. In terms of browser support, you can use it for automating Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, and Safari. Also important is the fact that Selenium can be extended using third-party plugins.<\/p>\n

\"Selenium\n<\/picture>\n

With Selenium, you can automate filling of forms, clicking buttons, taking a snapshot of a page, and other specific tasks online. One of these tasks is web extraction. While you can use it for web scraping, it is certainly not a Swiss Army Knife of web scraping; it has its own downside that will make you avoid using it for certain use cases.<\/p>\n

The most notable of its downsides is its slow speed. If you have tried using Scrapy<\/a> or the combo of Requests<\/a> and Beautifulsoup<\/a>, you will have a speed benchmark that will get you to rank Selenium slow. This is not unconnected to the fact that it makes use of a real browser, and rendering has to take place.<\/p>\n

For this reason, developers only use Selenium when dealing with JavaScript-rich sites that you will find it difficult to call underlying APIs. With Selenium, all you do is automate the process, and all events will be triggered.<\/p>\n

For static sites that you can quickly replicate API requests, and all content is downloaded upon loading, you will want to use the better option, which is Scrapy or the duo of Requests and Beautifulsoup.<\/p>\n