Stories from the Web Crawling trenches in Python library

Troubleshooting "ImportError: No module named requests" in VS Code

Author: Mohan Ganesan

Date: Feb 3, 2024

Frustrated with ImportError in VS Code? Check Python interpreter, reinstall requests, use virtual environment. Restart VS Code for changes to take effect.

What are the limitations of BeautifulSoup?

Author: Mohan Ganesan

Date: Feb 5, 2024

BeautifulSoup is a Python library for parsing and extracting data from HTML and XML documents. It struggles with modern JavaScript sites and cannot bypass most bot protections. CSS selectors and navigation logic can get complex. Consider alternatives like Scrapy, Puppeteer, or Playwright for professional web scraping.

Can BeautifulSoup parse XML?

Author: Mohan Ganesan

Date: Feb 5, 2024

Beautiful Soup is a Python library for parsing HTML and XML documents. It can parse XML documents with some limitations. For more advanced XML capabilities, consider using Python's built-in XML libraries or third-party libraries like lxml.

Is BeautifulSoup faster than selenium?

Author: Mohan Ganesan

Date: Feb 5, 2024

Web scraping involves extracting data from websites. BeautifulSoup is lightweight and efficient for scraping static content, while Selenium is necessary for dynamically loaded content. Together, they provide a comprehensive solution for web scraping.

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