Introduction to python scrapping

Introduction to Scraping in
Python

By :-

Mayank Jain (firesofmay@gmail.com)

Gaurav Jain (grvmjain@gmail.com)

Code is available at
https://github.com/firesofmay/Null-Pune-
Intro-to-Scraping-Talk-March-2012

Overview of the ”Presentation”

What is Scraping?

So what is this HTTP?

Tools of Trade

User Agents

Firebug

Using BeautfulSoup and Regular Expressions

Using Google Translator to post on Facebook in
hindi

Shodan

Robots.txt

What is Scraping?

Web scraping/Web harvesting/Web data
extraction is a computer software
technique of extracting information from
websites.

So what is this HTTP thing?

If you goto this page -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_%28programming_language%29


To view the HTTP Requests being made
we use a firefox Pluging called as
LiveHTTPHeaders

----------Request From Client to Server----------
GET /wiki/Python_(programming_language) HTTP/1.1
Host: en.wikipedia.org
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python
Cookie: clicktracking-session=QgVKVqIpsfsgsgszgvwBCASkSOdw2O;
mediaWiki.user.bucket:ext.articleFeedback-tracking=8%3Aignore;
mediaWiki.user.bucket:ext.articleFeedback-options=8%3Ashow
----------End of Request From Client to Server----------

----------Response From Server to Client----------

HTTP/1.0 200 OK

Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:44:46 GMT

Server: Apache

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff

Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate

Content-Language: en

Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie

Last-Modified: Sun, 09 Oct 2011 05:01:32 GMT

Content-Encoding: gzip

Content-Length: 47407

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Age: 10932

X-Cache: HIT from sq66.wikimedia.org, MISS from sq65.wikimedia.org

X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from sq66.wikimedia.org:3128, MISS from
sq65.wikimedia.org:80

Connection: keep-alive

----------End of Response From Server to Client----------

Tools of Trade

Linux OS is prefered (Installations Command for
Ubuntu Distro)

Dreampie IDE (For Quick Prototyping)

$ sudo apt-get install dreampie

Python 2.x (Preferably 2.6+)

pip installter for python packages

$ sudo apt-get install python-pip

Python requests: HTTP for Humans

$ pip install requests

Python re Library for regular Expressions
(Inbuilt)


LiveHTTPHeader Firefox Plugin

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
addon/live-http-headers/

Firebug Firefox Plugin

addon/firebug/?src=search

User Agent Switcher Firefox Plugin

addon/user-agent-switcher/?src=search

BeautifulSoup Python Library

http://www.crummy.com/software/Beautif
ulSoup/#Download

Fetching HTML Page (fetch.py)
import requests
url = 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_
%28programming_language%29'
data = requests.get(url).content
f = open("debug.html", 'w')
f.write(data)
f.close()

#To Run

$ python fetch.py

Why Does User Agent Matter?

When software agent operates in a
network protocol, it often identifies itself,
its application type, operating system,
software vendor, or software revision, by
submitting a characteristic identification
string to its operating peer.

In HTTP, SIP, and SMTP/NNTP protocols,
this identification is transmitted in a
header field User-Agent. Bots, such as
Web crawlers, often also include a URL
and/or e-mail address so that the
Webmaster can contact the operator of
the bot.

Demo of How Sites Behave
Differently With Different UAs - I

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

Visit the above site with UA (User Agent)
as firefox

Introduction to python scrapping

Differently With Different UAs - I

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

Now visit the above site with UA as IE

To switch your User Agent Use User Agent
Switcher Addon.

Notice the new banner, asking you to
install firefox even though you are using
firefox (based on your user agent
selected).

Differently With Different UAs - II

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/refe
rence/api/permissions/

Now visit the above site with UA as IE

Asked for Login? But I don't want to
Login!!!

Let's try a Google bot as UA

Yayyy!!

Let's try a blank UA

Yayy Again! :D

Inspecting Elements with
Firebug

We want to fetch the Given Sale Price
(19.99)


Goto this link - http://www.payless.com/store/product/detail.jsp?
catId=cat10243&subCatId=cat10243&skuId=091151050&productId=68423&lotId=091
151&category=


Right Click on $19.99 > Inspect Element
with firebug

Inspecting Elements with
Firebug

Demo Payless_Parser.py

Run the code

$ python Payless_Parser.py

Price of this item is 19.99

Modifiy The url variable to -
http://www.payless.com/store/product/deta
il.jsp?
catId=cat10088&subCatId=cat10243&skuI
d=094079050&productId=70984&lotId=09
4079&category=&catdisplayName=Wome
ns
Why does this work? Try to understand.

How about Extracting all the
Permissions from this page?

Demo
Extract_Facebook_Permission
s.py

Url to extract from :
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/refe
rence/api/permissions/

Check the next slide for Expected output
and how to run the code


$ python Extract_Facebook_Permissions.py

['user_about_me', 'friends_about_me', 'about', 'user_activities', 'friends_activities',
'activities', 'user_birthday', 'friends_birthday', 'birthday', 'user_checkins',
'friends_checkins', 'user_education_history', 'friends_education_history',
'education', 'user_events', 'friends_events', 'events', 'user_groups',
'friends_groups', 'groups', 'user_hometown', 'friends_hometown', 'hometown',
'user_interests', 'friends_interests', 'interests', 'user_likes', 'friends_likes', 'likes',
'user_location', 'friends_location', 'location', 'user_notes', 'friends_notes', 'notes',
'user_photos', 'friends_photos', 'user_questions', 'friends_questions',
'user_relationships', 'friends_relationships', 'user_relationship_details',
'friends_relationship_details', 'user_religion_politics', 'friends_religion_politics',
'user_status', 'friends_status', 'user_videos', 'friends_videos', 'user_website',
'friends_website', 'user_work_history', 'friends_work_history', 'work', 'email',
'email', 'read_friendlists', 'read_insights', 'read_mailbox', 'read_requests',
'read_stream', 'xmpp_login', 'ads_management', 'create_event',
'manage_friendlists', 'manage_notifications', 'user_online_presence',
'friends_online_presence', 'publish_checkins', 'publish_stream', 'publish_stream',
'rsvp_event']

How about writing our version
of Google Translate API?

Important: Google Translate API v2 is
now available as a paid service only,
and the number of requests your
application can make per day is limited. As
of December 1, 2011, Google Translate
API v1 is no longer available; it was
officially deprecated on May 26, 2011.
These decisions were made due to the
substantial economic burden caused by
extensive abuse. For website translations,
we encourage you to use the Google
Website Translator gadget.

Let's understand how it works
in background.

Use LiveHTTPHeaders To Understand this

Important Parameters that are passed

sl = en (Source Language = English)

tl = hi (Target Language = Hindi)

text = hello world


http://translate.google.com/?
sl=en&tl=hi&text=hello+world#

How about we post this
converted text to our facebook
wall? :)

fbconsole

Facebook Python API

Simplifies things

Very easy to install

https://github.com/facebook/fbconsole

$ sudo pip install fbconsole


We'll use the permissions we extracted in
this script :)

Demo
Google_Translator_With_FB_API.py
$ python Google_Translator_With_FB_API.py
Language to Convert from : en
Language to Convert to : hi
Text to Convert : wow
Converted Text : वाह


Check your facebook wall :)

Translated Text Posted on my
Facebook Wall

What is Shodan?

Web search engines, such as Google and
Bing, are great for finding websites. But
what if you're interested in finding
computers running a certain piece of
software (such as Apache)? Or if you want
to know which version of Microsoft IIS is
the most popular? Or you want to see how
many anonymous FTP servers there are?
Maybe a new vulnerability came out and
you want to see how many hosts it could
infect? Traditional web search engines
don't let you answer those questions.

What is Shodan?

SHODAN is a search engine that lets you
find specific computers (routers, servers,
etc.) using a variety of filters.

Public port scan directory or a search
engine of banners.

Scraping Shodan Data Preview

http://www.shodanhq.com/

Python API Is available -
http://docs.shodanhq.com/

But you have to get the advanced
features. :-/

By default, the following search filters for
Shodan are disabled: net, country, before,
after. To unlock those filters buy the
Unlocked API Add-On. No subscription
required!

http://www.shodanhq.com/data/addons

Demo shodanparser_New.py
$ python shodanparser_New.py
Query : country:IN HTTP/1.0 200 OK
3
98.146.42.77United States
178.33.70.221 France
115.133.223.66 Malaysia
218.250.60.122 Hong Kong
180.177.12.132 Taiwan
178.63.104.140 Germany
67.159.200.99 United States

robots.txt

The Robot Exclusion Standard, also
known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol
or robots.txt protocol, is a convention to
prevent cooperating web crawlers and
other web robots from accessing all or part
of a website which is otherwise publicly
viewable. Robots are often used by
search engines to categorize and archive
web sites, or by webmasters to proofread
source code. The standard is different
from, but can be used in conjunction with,
Sitemaps, a robot inclusion standard for
websites.

robots.txt

Despite the use of the terms "allow" and
"disallow", the protocol is purely advisory.
It relies on the cooperation of the web
robot, so that marking an area of a site out
of bounds with robots.txt does not
guarantee exclusion of all web robots. In
particular, malicious web robots are
unlikely to honor robots.txt

facebook.com/robots.txt
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /ac.php
Disallow: /ae.php
Disallow: /album.php
Disallow: /ap.php
Disallow: /autologin.php
Disallow: /checkpoint/
…............

Conculsion

Scraping has many usecases.

Most useful to write your own API if the
website does not provide one or has
limitations.

Very useful in combining Exiting APIs with
websites that do not provide APIs

Be careful of How badly you hit a server.

Follow robots.txt or take permissions.

References

Advance Scraping Video -

http://pyvideo.org/video/609/web-
scraping-reliably-and-efficiently-pull-data

Google Python Class Intermediate

http://code.google.com/edu/languages/g
oogle-python-class/set-up.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=tKTZoB2Vjuk&feature=plcp&context=
C42cb319VDvjVQa1PpcFMzwqYlYKVx
DoyEu1ISDDTjmz370vY8Xg4%3D

References

Python Absolute Beginner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=4Mf0h3HphEA&feature=channel_vide
o_title


Siddhant Sanyam's PyCon 11 Slides

https://github.com/siddhant3s/PyCon11-
Talk/tree/master/talk1_webscrapping

References

http://firesofmay.blogspot.in/2011/10/http-
web-scrapping-and-python-part-1.html

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

import requests, sys

url = 'http://translate.google.com/?
sl=en&tl=hi&text=Thank+you+Any+Questions?'

soup = BeautifulSoup(requests.get(url).content,
convertEntities=BeautifulSoup.HTML_ENTITIES)

print soup.find('div', {'id' : 'gt-res-content'}).find('span',
{'id':'result_box'}).text

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Introduction to python scrapping

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