1556787079
Building A Concurrent Web Scraper With Python and Selenium
This is a quick post that looks at how to speed up a simple, Python-based web scraping and crawling script with parallel processing via the multiprocessing library. We’ll also break down the script itself and show how to test the parsing functionality.
After completing this tutorial you should be able to:
- Scrape and crawl websites with Selenium and parse HTML with Beautiful Soup
- Set up unittest to test the scraping and parsing functionalities
- Set up multiprocessing to execute the web scraper in parallel
- Configure headless mode for ChromeDriver with Selenium
Project Setup
Clone down the repo if you’d like to follow along. From the command line run the following commands:
$ git clone git@github.com:calebpollman/web-scraping-parallel-processing.git
$ cd web-scraping-parallel-processing
$ python3.7 -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate
(env)$ pip install -r requirements.txt
The above commands may differ depending on your environment.
Install ChromeDriver globally. (We’re using version 73.0.3683.20).
Script Overview
The script traverses and scrapes the first 20 pages of Hacker News for information about the current articles listed using Selenium to automate interaction with the site and Beautiful Soup to parse the HTML.
import datetime
from time import sleep, time
from scrapers.scraper import get_driver, connect_to_base, \
parse_html, write_to_file
def run_process(page_number, filename, browser):
if connect_to_base(browser, page_number):
sleep(2)
html = browser.page_source
output_list = parse_html(html)
write_to_file(output_list, filename)
else:
print('Error connecting to hackernews')
if __name__ == '__main__':
start_time = time()
current_page = 1
output_timestamp = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S')
output_filename = f'output_{output_timestamp}.csv'
browser = get_driver()
while current_page <= 20:
print(f'Scraping page #{current_page}...')
run_process(current_page, output_filename, browser)
current_page = current_page + 1
browser.quit()
end_time = time()
elapsed_time = end_time - start_time
print(f'Elapsed run time: {elapsed_time} seconds')
Let’s start with the main-condition block. After setting a few variables, the browser is initialized via get_driver() from scrapers/scraper.py.
if __name__ == '__main__':
# set variables
start_time = time()
current_page = 1
output_timestamp = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S')
output_filename = f'output_{output_timestamp}.csv'
########
# here #
########
browser = get_driver()
# scrape and crawl
while current_page <= 20:
print(f'Scraping page #{current_page}...')
run_process(current_page, output_filename, browser)
current_page = current_page + 1
# exit
browser.quit()
end_time = time()
elapsed_time = end_time - start_time
print(f'Elapsed run time: {elapsed_time} seconds')
A while loop is then configured to control the flow of the overall scraper.
if __name__ == '__main__':
# set variables
start_time = time()
current_page = 1
output_timestamp = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S')
output_filename = f'output_{output_timestamp}.csv'
browser = get_driver()
# scrape and crawl
########
# here #
########
while current_page <= 20:
print(f'Scraping page #{current_page}...')
run_process(current_page, output_filename, browser)
current_page = current_page + 1
# exit
browser.quit()
end_time = time()
elapsed_time = end_time - start_time
print(f'Elapsed run time: {elapsed_time} seconds')
Within the loop, run_process() is called, which houses the connection and scraping functions.
def run_process(page_number, filename, browser):
if connect_to_base(browser, page_number):
sleep(2)
html = browser.page_source
output_list = parse_html(html)
write_to_file(output_list, filename)
else:
print('Error connecting to hackernews')
In run_process(), the browser instance and a page number are passed to connect_to_base().
def run_process(page_number, filename, browser):
########
# here #
########
if connect_to_base(browser, page_number):
sleep(2)
html = browser.page_source
output_list = parse_html(html)
write_to_file(output_list, filename)
else:
print('Error connecting to hackernews')
This function attempts to connect to Hacker News and then uses Selenium’s explicit wait functionality to ensure the element with id='hnmain' has loaded before continuing.
def connect_to_base(browser, page_number):
base_url = f'https://news.ycombinator.com/news?p={page_number}'
connection_attempts = 0
while connection_attempts < 3:
try:
browser.get(base_url)
# wait for table element with id = 'hnmain' to load
# before returning True
WebDriverWait(browser, 5).until(
EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, 'hnmain'))
)
return True
except Exception as ex:
connection_attempts += 1
print(f'Error connecting to {base_url}.')
print(f'Attempt #{connection_attempts}.')
return False
Review the Selenium docs for more information on explicit wait.
To emulate a human user,sleep(2)is called after the browser has connected to Hacker News.
def run_process(page_number, filename, browser):
if connect_to_base(browser, page_number):
########
# here #
########
sleep(2)
html = browser.page_source
output_list = parse_html(html)
write_to_file(output_list, filename)
else:
print('Error connecting to hackernews')
Once the page has loaded and sleep(2) has executed, the browser grabs the HTML source, which is then passed to parse_html().
def run_process(page_number, filename, browser):
if connect_to_base(browser, page_number):
sleep(2)
########
# here #
########
html = browser.page_source
########
# here #
########
output_list = parse_html(html)
write_to_file(output_list, filename)
else:
print('Error connecting to hackernews')
parse_html() uses Beautiful Soup to parse the HTML, generating a list of dicts with the appropriate data.
def parse_html(html):
# create soup object
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')
output_list = []
# parse soup object to get article id, rank, score, and title
tr_blocks = soup.find_all('tr', class_='athing')
article = 0
for tr in tr_blocks:
article_id = tr.get('id')
article_url = tr.find_all('a')[1]['href']
# check if article is a hacker news article
if 'item?id=' in article_url:
article_url = f'https://news.ycombinator.com/{article_url}'
load_time = get_load_time(article_url)
try:
score = soup.find(id=f'score_{article_id}').string
except Exception as ex:
score = '0 points'
article_info = {
'id': article_id,
'load_time': load_time,
'rank': tr.span.string,
'score': score,
'title': tr.find(class_='storylink').string,
'url': article_url
}
# appends article_info to output_list
output_list.append(article_info)
article += 1
return output_list
This function also passes the article URL to get_load_time(), which loads the URL and records the subsequent load time.
def get_load_time(article_url):
try:
# set headers
headers = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.95 Safari/537.36'}
# make get request to article_url
response = requests.get(
article_url, headers=headers, stream=True, timeout=3.000)
# get page load time
load_time = response.elapsed.total_seconds()
except Exception as ex:
load_time = 'Loading Error'
return load_time
The output is added to a CSV file.
def run_process(page_number, filename, browser):
if connect_to_base(browser, page_number):
sleep(2)
html = browser.page_source
output_list = parse_html(html)
########
# here #
########
write_to_file(output_list, filename)
else:
print('Error connecting to hackernews')
write_to_file():
def write_to_file(output_list, filename):
for row in output_list:
with open(filename, 'a') as csvfile:
fieldnames = ['id', 'load_time', 'rank', 'score', 'title', 'url']
writer = csv.DictWriter(csvfile, fieldnames=fieldnames)
writer.writerow(row)
Finally, back in the while loop, the page_number is incremented and the process starts over again.
if __name__ == '__main__':
# set variables
start_time = time()
current_page = 1
output_timestamp = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S')
output_filename = f'output_{output_timestamp}.csv'
browser = get_driver()
# scrape and crawl
while current_page <= 20:
print(f'Scraping page #{current_page}...')
run_process(current_page, output_filename, browser)
########
# here #
########
current_page = current_page + 1
# exit
browser.quit()
end_time = time()
elapsed_time = end_time - start_time
print(f'Elapsed run time: {elapsed_time} seconds')
Want to test this out? Grab the full script here.
It took about 355 seconds (nearly 6 minutes) to run:
(env)$ python script.py
Scraping page #1...
Scraping page #2...
Scraping page #3...
Scraping page #4...
Scraping page #5...
Scraping page #6...
Scraping page #7...
Scraping page #8...
Scraping page #9...
Scraping page #10...
Scraping page #11...
Scraping page #12...
Scraping page #13...
Scraping page #14...
Scraping page #15...
Scraping page #16...
Scraping page #17...
Scraping page #18...
Scraping page #19...
Scraping page #20...
Elapsed run time: 355.06936597824097 seconds
Keep in mind that there may not be content on all 20 pages, so the elapsed time may be different on your end. This script was ran when there was content on 16 pages (461 records).
Got it? Great! Let’s add some basic testing.
Testing
To test the parsing functionality without initiating the browser and, thus, making repeated GET requests to Hacker News, you can download the page HTML and parse it locally. This can help avoid scenarios where you may get your IP blocked for making too many requests too quickly while writing and testing your parsing function, as well as saving you time by not needing to fire up a browser every time you run the script.
test/test_scraper.py:
import unittest
from scrapers.scraper import parse_html
class TestParseFunction(unittest.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
with open('test/test.html', encoding='utf-8') as f:
html = f.read()
self.output = parse_html(html)
def tearDown(self):
self.output = []
def test_output_is_not_none(self):
self.assertIsNotNone(self.output)
def test_output_is_a_list(self):
self.assertTrue(isinstance(self.output, list))
def test_output_is_a_list_of_dicts(self):
self.assertTrue(all(isinstance(elem, dict) for elem in self.output))
if __name__ == '__main__':
unittest.main()
Ensure all is well:
(env)$ python test/test_scraper.py
...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 3 tests in 64.225s
OK
64 seconds?! Want to mock get_load_time() to bypass the GET request?
import unittest
from unittest.mock import patch
from scrapers.scraper import parse_html
class TestParseFunction(unittest.TestCase):
@patch('scrapers.scraper.get_load_time')
def setUp(self, mock_get_load_time):
mock_get_load_time.return_value = 'mocked!'
with open('test/test.html', encoding='utf-8') as f:
html = f.read()
self.output = parse_html(html)
def tearDown(self):
self.output = []
def test_output_is_not_none(self):
self.assertIsNotNone(self.output)
def test_output_is_a_list(self):
self.assertTrue(isinstance(self.output, list))
def test_output_is_a_list_of_dicts(self):
self.assertTrue(all(isinstance(elem, dict) for elem in self.output))
if __name__ == '__main__':
unittest.main()
Test:
(env)$ python test/test_scraper.py
...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 3 tests in 0.423s
OK
Configure Multiprocessing
Now comes up the fun part! By making just a few changes to the script, we can speed things up:
import datetime
from itertools import repeat
from time import sleep, time
from multiprocessing import Pool, cpu_count
from scraper.scraper import get_driver, connect_to_base, \
parse_html, write_to_file
def run_process(page_number, filename):
browser = get_driver()
if connect_to_base(browser, page_number):
sleep(2)
html = browser.page_source
output_list = parse_html(html)
write_to_file(output_list, filename)
browser.quit()
else:
print('Error connecting to hackernews')
browser.quit()
if __name__ == '__main__':
start_time = time()
output_timestamp = datetime.datetime.now().strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S')
output_filename = f'output_{output_timestamp}.csv'
with Pool(cpu_count()-1) as p:
p.starmap(run_process, zip(range(1, 21), repeat(output_filename)))
p.close()
p.join()
end_time = time()
elapsed_time = end_time - start_time
print(f'Elapsed run time: {elapsed_time} seconds')
With the multiprocessing library, Pool is used to spawn a number of subprocesses based on the number of CPUs available on the system (minus one since the system processes take up a core).
This script is tested on a i7 Macbook Pro that has 8 cores.
Run:
(env)$ python script_parallel.py
Elapsed run time: 62.95027780532837 seconds
Check out the completed script here.## Configure Headless ChromeDriver
To speed things up even further we can run Chrome in headless mode by simply updating get_driver() in scrapers/scraper.py:
def get_driver():
# initialize options
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
# pass in headless argument to options
options.add_argument('--headless')
# initialize driver
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options)
return driver
Run:
(env)$ python script_parallel.py
Elapsed run time: 58.14033889770508 seconds
Conclusion
With a small amount of variation from the original code, we were able to configure parallel processing in the script and set up ChromeDriver to run a headless browser to take the script’s run time from around 355 seconds to just over 58 seconds. In this specific scenario that’s 89.3% faster, which is a huge improvement.
I hope this helps your scripts. You can find the code in the repo.
#python #web-development #selenium
What is GEEK
Buddha Community
1624930726
Automating WhatsApp Web with Alright and Python
Alright is a python wrapper that helps you automate WhatsApp web using python, giving you the capability to send messages, images, video, and files to both saved and unsaved contacts without having to rescan the QR code every time.
Why Alright?
I was looking for a way to control and automate WhatsApp web with Python; I came across some very nice libraries and wrappers implementations, including:
So I tried
pywhatkit, a well crafted to be used, but its implementations require you to open a new browser tab and scan QR code every time you send a message, no matter if it’s the same person, which was a deal-breaker for using it.
I then tried
pywhatsapp,which is based onyowsupand require you to do some registration withyowsupbefore using it of which after a bit of googling, I got scared of having my number blocked. So I went for the next option.
I then went for WebWhatsapp-Wrapper. It has some good documentation and recent commits so I had hoped it is going to work. But It didn’t for me, and after having a couple of errors, I abandoned it to look for the next alternative.
PyWhatsapp by shauryauppal, which was more of a CLI tool than a wrapper, surprisingly worked. Its approach allows you to dynamically send WhatsApp messages to unsaved contacts without rescanning QR-code every time.
So what I did is refactoring the implementation of that tool to be more of a wrapper to easily allow people to run different scripts on top of it. Instead of just using it as a tool, I then thought of sharing the codebase with people who might struggle to do this as I did.
#python #python-programming #python-tutorials #python-programming-lists #selenium #python-dev-tips #python-developers #programming #web-monetization
1626775355
Why use Python for Software Development
No programming language is pretty much as diverse as Python. It enables building cutting edge applications effortlessly. Developers are as yet investigating the full capability of end-to-end Python development services in various areas.
By areas, we mean FinTech, HealthTech, InsureTech, Cybersecurity, and that's just the beginning. These are New Economy areas, and Python has the ability to serve every one of them. The vast majority of them require massive computational abilities. Python's code is dynamic and powerful - equipped for taking care of the heavy traffic and substantial algorithmic capacities.
Programming advancement is multidimensional today. Endeavor programming requires an intelligent application with AI and ML capacities. Shopper based applications require information examination to convey a superior client experience. Netflix, Trello, and Amazon are genuine instances of such applications. Python assists with building them effortlessly.
5 Reasons to Utilize Python for Programming Web Apps
Python can do such numerous things that developers can't discover enough reasons to admire it. Python application development isn't restricted to web and enterprise applications. It is exceptionally adaptable and superb for a wide range of uses.
Robust frameworks
Python is known for its tools and frameworks. There's a structure for everything. Django is helpful for building web applications, venture applications, logical applications, and mathematical processing. Flask is another web improvement framework with no conditions.
Web2Py, CherryPy, and Falcon offer incredible capabilities to customize Python development services. A large portion of them are open-source frameworks that allow quick turn of events.
Simple to read and compose
Python has an improved sentence structure - one that is like the English language. New engineers for Python can undoubtedly understand where they stand in the development process. The simplicity of composing allows quick application building.
The motivation behind building Python, as said by its maker Guido Van Rossum, was to empower even beginner engineers to comprehend the programming language. The simple coding likewise permits developers to roll out speedy improvements without getting confused by pointless subtleties.
Utilized by the best
Alright - Python isn't simply one more programming language. It should have something, which is the reason the business giants use it. Furthermore, that too for different purposes. Developers at Google use Python to assemble framework organization systems, parallel information pusher, code audit, testing and QA, and substantially more. Netflix utilizes Python web development services for its recommendation algorithm and media player.
Massive community support
Python has a steadily developing community that offers enormous help. From amateurs to specialists, there's everybody. There are a lot of instructional exercises, documentation, and guides accessible for Python web development solutions.
Today, numerous universities start with Python, adding to the quantity of individuals in the community. Frequently, Python designers team up on various tasks and help each other with algorithmic, utilitarian, and application critical thinking.
Progressive applications
Python is the greatest supporter of data science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence at any enterprise software development company. Its utilization cases in cutting edge applications are the most compelling motivation for its prosperity. Python is the second most well known tool after R for data analytics.
The simplicity of getting sorted out, overseeing, and visualizing information through unique libraries makes it ideal for data based applications. TensorFlow for neural networks and OpenCV for computer vision are two of Python's most well known use cases for Machine learning applications.
Summary
Thinking about the advances in programming and innovation, Python is a YES for an assorted scope of utilizations. Game development, web application development services, GUI advancement, ML and AI improvement, Enterprise and customer applications - every one of them uses Python to its full potential.
The disadvantages of Python web improvement arrangements are regularly disregarded by developers and organizations because of the advantages it gives. They focus on quality over speed and performance over blunders. That is the reason it's a good idea to utilize Python for building the applications of the future.
#python development services #python development company #python app development #python development #python in web development #python software development
1593156510
Basic Data Types in Python | Python Web Development For Beginners
At the end of 2019, Python is one of the fastest-growing programming languages. More than 10% of developers have opted for Python development.
In the programming world, Data types play an important role. Each Variable is stored in different data types and responsible for various functions. Python had two different objects, and They are mutable and immutable objects.
Table of Contents hide
III Built-in data types in Python
Mutable objects
The Size and declared value and its sequence of the object can able to be modified called mutable objects.
Mutable Data Types are list, dict, set, byte array
Immutable objects
The Size and declared value and its sequence of the object can able to be modified.
Immutable data types are int, float, complex, String, tuples, bytes, and frozen sets.
id() and type() is used to know the Identity and data type of the object
a**=25+**85j
type**(a)**
output**:<class’complex’>**
b**={1:10,2:“Pinky”****}**
id**(b)**
output**:**238989244168
Built-in data types in Python
a**=str(“Hello python world”)****#str**
b**=int(18)****#int**
c**=float(20482.5)****#float**
d**=complex(5+85j)****#complex**
e**=list((“python”,“fast”,“growing”,“in”,2018))****#list**
f**=tuple((“python”,“easy”,“learning”))****#tuple**
g**=range(10)****#range**
h**=dict(name=“Vidu”,age=36)****#dict**
i**=set((“python”,“fast”,“growing”,“in”,2018))****#set**
j**=frozenset((“python”,“fast”,“growing”,“in”,2018))****#frozenset**
k**=bool(18)****#bool**
l**=bytes(8)****#bytes**
m**=bytearray(8)****#bytearray**
n**=memoryview(bytes(18))****#memoryview**
Numbers (int,Float,Complex)
Numbers are stored in numeric Types. when a number is assigned to a variable, Python creates Number objects.
#signed interger
age**=**18
print**(age)**
Output**:**18
Python supports 3 types of numeric data.
int (signed integers like 20, 2, 225, etc.)
float (float is used to store floating-point numbers like 9.8, 3.1444, 89.52, etc.)
complex (complex numbers like 8.94j, 4.0 + 7.3j, etc.)
A complex number contains an ordered pair, i.e., a + ib where a and b denote the real and imaginary parts respectively).
String
The string can be represented as the sequence of characters in the quotation marks. In python, to define strings we can use single, double, or triple quotes.
# String Handling
‘Hello Python’
#single (') Quoted String
“Hello Python”
# Double (") Quoted String
“”“Hello Python”“”
‘’‘Hello Python’‘’
# triple (‘’') (“”") Quoted String
In python, string handling is a straightforward task, and python provides various built-in functions and operators for representing strings.
The operator “+” is used to concatenate strings and “*” is used to repeat the string.
“Hello”+“python”
output**:****‘Hello python’**
"python "*****2
'Output : Python python ’
#python web development #data types in python #list of all python data types #python data types #python datatypes #python types #python variable type
1618217374
Hire Python Developer | Python web development company india
Are you looking to hire Python developers online? ValueCoders provide dedicated and certified Python engineers who are proficient in building robust, secure & scalable web applications utilizing the best Python development strategies.
Visit Website - https://bit.ly/3td9l9Y
#python web development #hire python developers #hiring python developers #hire python developer #web-development #python
1597751700
How To Compare Tesla and Ford Company By Using Magic Methods in Python
Magic Methods are the special methods which gives us the ability to access built in syntactical features such as ‘<’, ‘>’, ‘==’, ‘+’ etc…
You must have worked with such methods without knowing them to be as magic methods. Magic methods can be identified with their names which start with __ and ends with __ like init, call, str etc. These methods are also called Dunder Methods, because of their name starting and ending with Double Underscore (Dunder).
Now there are a number of such special methods, which you might have come across too, in Python. We will just be taking an example of a few of them to understand how they work and how we can use them.
1. init
class AnyClass:
def __init__():
print("Init called on its own")
obj = AnyClass()
The first example is _init, _and as the name suggests, it is used for initializing objects. Init method is called on its own, ie. whenever an object is created for the class, the init method is called on its own.
The output of the above code will be given below. Note how we did not call the init method and it got invoked as we created an object for class AnyClass.
Init called on its own
2. add
Let’s move to some other example, add gives us the ability to access the built in syntax feature of the character +. Let’s see how,
class AnyClass:
def __init__(self, var):
self.some_var = var
def __add__(self, other_obj):
print("Calling the add method")
return self.some_var + other_obj.some_var
obj1 = AnyClass(5)
obj2 = AnyClass(6)
obj1 + obj2
#python3 #python #python-programming #python-web-development #python-tutorials #python-top-story #python-tips #learn-python