Web Scraping Using Python’s Beautiful Soup Library

Speaker: Sue Bayes, Microsoft DataPlatform MVP

### Web Scraping Made Simple: Unlocking Data with Beautiful Soup

This 50-minute session introduces attendees to the fundamentals of web scraping using Python’s Beautiful Soup library. Attendees will learn how to navigate the complexities of HTML structures to extract valuable data efficiently. Key skills and concepts covered include:

Understanding HTML and CSS: Learn how web pages are structured to identify the data you need.

Setting up Beautiful Soup: Install and initialize the library to parse web content.

Scraping Techniques: Use tags, attributes, and classes to locate and extract specific elements from web pages.

Handling Dynamic Content: Work with tools like requests to scrape static pages and integrate with libraries like Selenium for dynamic content.

Saving Scraped Data: Export extracted data into structured formats like CSV or JSON for further analysis.

The session also emphasizes ethical considerations and best practices for web scraping, including handling website terms of service and respecting rate limits. Through hands-on examples, attendees will scrape a sample website and transform raw HTML into actionable insights. By the end of the session, participants will have the confidence to build their own web scraping workflows and apply them to real-world projects.