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Python Library for HTML Parsing & Web Scraping

Open Source Python Library that Facilitates Webpage Parsing, Data Extraction & Web Scraping. It allows advanced HTML parsing, JavaScript rendering, and more.

The web is an ocean of information, and as software developers, we often find ourselves in need of extracting specific data from websites. Web scraping is a powerful technique that allows us to automate the process of gathering data from web pages. Among the many libraries available, Requests-HTML stands out as a versatile and user-friendly option. It is a Python library that enables web scraping by combining the power of two popular libraries - Requests and BeautifulSoup. It was designed with simplicity and ease of use in mind, making it an excellent choice for both beginners and experienced developers alike.

The Requests-HTML library provides an intuitive API that is designed to feel similar to the well-known Requests library, making it easy to pick up for anyone familiar with HTTP requests. There are several important features part of the library, such as parsing large HTML files, CSS selectors support, XPath selectors support, mocked user-agent, automatic redirects following, grab a list of all links on the page, grab an element's text contents, search for links within an element, maintaining session persistence, easy user-agent rotation and many more.

Unlike traditional HTML parsers, Requests-HTML is capable of rendering JavaScript content, making it suitable for websites that load data dynamically using AJAX or JavaScript frameworks. Its intuitive API, support for JavaScript rendering, and flexible element selection using CSS selectors or XPath make it a valuable tool for any web scraping project. Whether you're gathering data for research or building a web application, the Requests-HTML library is certainly worth considering. So, why not give it a try in your next web scraping project? Happy coding!

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Getting Started with Requests-HTML

The recommended and easiest way to install Requests-HTML is using pip. Please use the following command a smooth installation.

Install Requests-HTML via pip

pip install requests-html

You can also install it manually; download the latest release files directly from GitHub repository.

Extract Contents from an HTML Page via Python

The open source Requests-HTML library allows software developers to load and extract contents from an HTML file inside Ptyhon applications. One of the core features that sets the library apart is its seamless integration with PyQuery. This integration enables the library to effortlessly parse HTML documents and extract data using jQuery-like selectors. This flexibility simplifies data extraction and saves developers time and effort. The following examples shows how software developers can extract the titles and links of a web page with just a couple of lines of Python code.

How to Extract the Titles and Links of a Web Page via Python API?

from requests_html import HTMLSession

url = 'https://www.example-blog.com'
session = HTMLSession()
response = session.get(url)

# Render JavaScript to ensure dynamic content loads
response.html.render()

# Extract titles and links of the latest articles
articles = response.html.find('.article')

for article in articles:
    title = article.find('.title', first=True).text
    link = article.find('a', first=True).attrs['href']
    print(f"Title: {title}\nLink: {link}\n")

Parse a Web Page & Extract a Particle Element via Python

The open source Requests-HTML library has provided a very useful feature for extracting a specific element inside an HTML document via Python API. The library supports both CSS selectors and XPath expressions, giving you flexibility in selecting and extracting specific elements from the HTML page. The library also supports the use of XPath expressions for more complex element selection. The library also provide complete support for interacting with web forms as well. The following example shows how straightforward it is to scrape a web page using Requests-HTML library.

How to Extract a Particular Element of HTMP Page via Python Library?

from requests_html import HTMLSession

# Create an HTML session
session = HTMLSession()

# Send a GET request and render JavaScript (if any)
response = session.get('https://example.com')

# Access page content
html_content = response.text

# Extract specific elements using CSS selectors
titles = response.html.find('.article-title')

# Print the titles
for title in titles:
    print(title.text)