Web Scraping or Web Crawling is a technology used to automatically obtain information on the Internet. Here, I will try to outline what you should know at each stage from entry to mastery.
Entry stage
- Basic programming knowledge : Master a programming language, usually Python.
- HTTP Protocol Basics : Understand the basic concepts of HTTP requests and responses.
- HTML and CSS basics : Understand the DOM structure and how to use CSS selectors.
- Basic libraries and tools : Familiar with Requests, BeautifulSoup or lxml.
- Simple text processing : Ability to parse and extract required information.
- File operations : reading and writing files, usually in text or CSV format.
Advanced stage
- JavaScript Basics : Learn how to work with dynamic websites.
- More advanced libraries and tools : such as Selenium, Scrapy or Puppeteer.
- API Interaction : Learn how to use APIs to obtain data.
- Data Storage : Learn how to use a database, usually SQL or NoSQL.
- Data cleaning : Use Pandas or other tools for data processing.
- Exception handling : Able to handle various network exceptions and errors.
- Scraping strategies : Learn how to avoid getting banned, such as setting appropriate delays, using proxies, and more.
Advanced stage
- Distributed crawlers : Use multiple machines or cloud services to crawl.
- Anti-anti-crawling strategy : able to handle complex anti-crawling mechanisms.
- Data analysis and visualization : Use tools such as Matplotlib, Tableau or Power BI for data analysis.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP) : Perform deeper analysis of scraped text data.
- Machine learning and image recognition : used to process more complex data forms or verification codes.
- Process Automation : Automate the entire process of data acquisition, processing and storage.
- Legal and ethical considerations : Understand relevant laws and regulations to ensure that crawler activities are legal and ethical.
mastery stage
- Big data processing : Able to handle the storage and analysis of large-scale data.
- Real-time crawling and analysis : achieve almost real-time data acquisition and analysis.
- Adaptive crawlers : Able to automatically adapt to changes in website structure or content.
- Advanced monitoring and reporting : Build an advanced monitoring system to report various indicators and possible problems in a timely manner.
- Security : Pay close attention to the security issues of crawlers and data storage.
- Business application and consulting : Able to build and maintain crawler systems for enterprises, or provide related consulting services.
At different stages, in addition to technical capabilities, mastering soft skills such as project management, team collaboration, and code quality is also very important. Moreover, with the development of big data and AI technology, the application scenarios and related technologies of web crawlers are also constantly evolving, and continuous learning and adaptation are very necessary.