In this article, we will learn how to scrape property listings from Booking.com using Visual Basic. We will use the HtmlAgilityPack and HttpClient libraries to fetch the HTML content and parse/extract details like property name, location, ratings etc.
Prerequisites
To follow along, you will need:
Adding References
We need to add references to the following libraries:
In Visual Studio right click on References > Add Reference and select the above.
Importing Namespaces
Import the required namespaces:
Imports HtmlAgilityPack
Imports System.Net.Http
Defining URL
—
Define the target URL:
Dim url As String = "<https://www.booking.com/searchresults.en-gb.html?ss=New+York&checkin=2023-03-01&checkout=2023-03-05&group_adults=2>"
Setting User Agent
Set the user agent string:
Dim userAgent As String = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/98.0.4758.102 Safari/537.36"
Fetching HTML Page
Use HttpClient to send request:
Dim client As New HttpClient()
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.TryAddWithoutValidation("User-Agent", userAgent)
Dim response As HttpResponseMessage = client.GetAsync(url).Result
Dim html As String = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result
We add the user agent header and fetch the HTML.
Parsing HTML
Load HTML into HtmlDocument:
Dim htmlDoc As New HtmlDocument()
htmlDoc.LoadHtml(html)
Extracting Cards
Get elements with data-testid attribute:
Dim cards = htmlDoc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//div[@data-testid='property-card']")
This extracts the property cards using XPath.
Processing Each Card
Loop through the cards:
For Each card As HtmlNode In cards
' Extract data from card
Next
Inside we extract details from each
Extracting Title
Get h3 text:
Dim title As String = card.SelectSingleNode("h3").InnerText
Extracting Location
Get address span text:
Dim location As String = card.SelectSingleNode("span[@data-testid='address']").InnerText
Extracting Rating
Get aria-label attribute value:
Dim rating As String = card.SelectSingleNode("div[@class='e4755bbd60']").GetAttributeValue("aria-label", "")
Filter by class name.
Extracting Review Count
Get div text:
Dim reviewCount As String = card.SelectSingleNode("div[@class='abf093bdfe']").InnerText
Extracting Description
Get description div text:
Dim description As String = card.SelectSingleNode("div[@class='d7449d770c']").InnerText
Printing Output
Print the extracted data:
Console.WriteLine("Title: " & title)
Console.WriteLine("Location: " & location)
Console.WriteLine("Rating: " & rating)
Console.WriteLine("Review Count: " & reviewCount)
Console.WriteLine("Description: " & description)
Full Code
Here is the complete VB.NET scraping code:
Imports HtmlAgilityPack
Imports System.Net.Http
Module Module1
Sub Main()
Dim url As String = "<https://www.booking.com/searchresults.en-gb.html?ss=New+York&checkin=2023-03-01&checkout=2023-03-05&group_adults=2>"
Dim userAgent As String = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/98.0.4758.102 Safari/537.36"
Dim client As New HttpClient()
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.TryAddWithoutValidation("User-Agent", userAgent)
Dim response As HttpResponseMessage = client.GetAsync(url).Result
Dim html As String = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result
Dim htmlDoc As New HtmlDocument()
htmlDoc.LoadHtml(html)
Dim cards = htmlDoc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//div[@data-testid='property-card']")
For Each card As HtmlNode In cards
Dim title As String = card.SelectSingleNode("h3").InnerText
Dim location As String = card.SelectSingleNode("span[@data-testid='address']").InnerText
Dim rating As String = card.SelectSingleNode("div[@class='e4755bbd60']").GetAttributeValue("aria-label", "")
Dim reviewCount As String = card.SelectSingleNode("div[@class='abf093bdfe']").InnerText
Dim description As String = card.SelectSingleNode("div[@class='d7449d770c']").InnerText
Console.WriteLine("Title: " & title)
Console.WriteLine("Location: " & location)
Console.WriteLine("Rating: " & rating)
Console.WriteLine("Review Count: " & reviewCount)
Console.WriteLine("Description: " & description)
Next
End Sub
End Module
This extracts key data from Booking.com listings using VB.NET. The same approach can be used to scrape any site.
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