Because cURL is much more diverse, our function would need to be much more complex in order to accommodate all its features. However, like I said, one of Python’s greatest strengths is its package diversity. Or you can even build your own function around it and use it throughout the project: import os def curl(website): return os.system(f'curl ""') print(curl('')) For instance, you could use Python’s `os` module and send terminal commands: import os curl = os.system(f'curl ""') print(curl) So far, we’ve discovered curl how to use it in the terminal, but how do we actually integrate it with Python? Well, there are actually multiple ways you can approach this. As you will see later in this article, data manipulation requires parsing the HTML files, such that you can then ‘mine’ the elements and extract only the information you are targeting from that particular web page. When it comes to web scraping in particular, Python is a great choice because of all the packages it comes with. So if at any time you encounter an issue and you’re stuck, don’t hesitate to ask a question on Stackoverflow for example, and someone will surely help you. It also has a great community that is always ready to jump in and help. Not only that it is very powerful, but its simple syntax makes it perfect for beginner programmers. Undoubtedly, Python is one of the most popular programming languages. Why Choose Python For a Web Scraping Project And since we are programmers, we want to manipulate the data programmatically. If you want to build a real web scraping project, you will need to somehow use the data you collected. It is simply a matter of sending a command and receiving some information. Type that command in your terminal and you will receive the plain HTML as a response: Customer name: Telephone: E-mail address: Pizza Size Small Medium Large Pizza Toppings Bacon Extra Cheese Onion Mushroom Preferred delivery time: Delivery instructions: Submit order How to Use cURL in PythonĪs you saw, extracting data with cURL is a straightforward solution and requires no actual coding. And we know we can use cURL to scrape websites, but how do we actually do it? Well, if you haven’t already been curious and tried, simply ask curl to access any generic URL that you know would be a traditional HTML based website. However, for now, our focus is not data manipulation, but rather data extraction. In terms of web scraping, you will usually come across traditional websites that serve HTML file, that you will then have to parse and extract data from. That is because this particular API endpoint returns data in JSON format. In the example above, the response we received from the ipify server was a JSON file. You can also use the `-help` switch and read about the various options available. If you want to learn more about curl how to use, you can go over the official documentation. All in just one line of code.ĬURL is actually a more advanced tool. Even though it might not seem like it, you have just built the infrastructure for a future web scraper. The output of this example will be a JSON object containing your IP address. This simple command is accessing ipify’s API, requesting information from the server, just like a traditional browser would do. To use cURL from the command line, simply open a new terminal window and type `curl` followed by the URL you want to scrape. However, I can assure you that in practice, as you will discover throughout this article, cURL is maybe one of the easiest tools you will ever use as a programmer. I know that when mentioning the command line, things may seem complicated. How to use cURL in Python in order to build a simple web scraperįor short, cURL is mainly a command-line tool used to fetch data from a server. How to use cURL command to gather information from any website. What is cURL and how to access it from the command-line.Here is a preview of just a fraction of the things that you will learn after reading this article: However, in today’s article, we will discover How To Use CURL With Python for a web scraper. Of course, there are different ways you can achieve this. The most basic action any web scraping app has to perform is to first gather the HTML file and only then focus on manipulating it. How To Use CURL With Python For Web Scraping
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