Using python to extract specific data from a website.

Question

Hey, I would like to extract specific information of a website and use that data in my python project. For example, I would like to use to python to find out how many views a video on youtube has. How would I be able to do that? Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

There are a lof of different methods to get information from another site.

For big sites like facebook, instagram, youtube, etc. there are often api's with built in calls that you can use to get certain data. You'll need to look at documentation from each site's developer information for moe on how to implement this method and for additional requirements.

Another method I'm familiar with is called "data scraping." Data scraping is where you use your code to extract data from the human readable elements on a page (i.e. the output from the delivered code from the web server as it appears in a browser). There are a ton of articles on how to get started with data scraping in python and other languages.

I recommend doing a search on youtube to find a free course on data scraping and how to apply it using python. Once you know the basics, you can do a bit more research on how to apply this knowledge to the site you are interested in scraping from.

You should note that scraping in some cases violates the terms of use for certain sites so be careful and do your due diligence before just going right into data collection.