Web Scraping data from different sites

I am looking for a few ideas on how can I solve a design problem I'm going to be faced with building a web scraper to scrape multiple sites. Writing the scraper(s) is not the problem, matching the data from different sites (which may have small differences) is.

For the sake of being generic assume that I am scraping something like this from two or more different sites:

    public class Data {
        public int id;
        public String firstname;
        public String surname;
        ....
    }

If i scrape this from two different sites, I will encounter the situation where I could have the following:

Site A: id=100, firstname=William, surname=Doe

Site B: id=1974, firstname=Bill, surname=Doe

Essentially, I would like to consider these two sets of data the same (they are the same person but with their name slightly different on each site). I am looking for possible design solutions that can handle this.

The only idea I've come up with is scraping the data from a third location and using it as a reference list. Then when I scrape site A or B I can, over time, build up a list of failures and store them in a list for each scraper so that it can know (if i find id=100 then i know that the firstname will be William etc). I can't help but feel this is a rubbish idea!

If you need any more info, or if you think my description is a bit naff, let me know!

Thanks,

DMcB


Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23970057/web-scraping-data-from-different-sites

Scrape Data Point Using Python

I am looking to scrape a data point using Python off of the url http://www.cavirtex.com/orderbook .

The data point I am looking to scrape is the lowest bid offer, which at the current moment looks like this:

<tr>
 <td><b>Jan. 19, 2014, 2:37 a.m.</b></td>
 <td><b>0.0775/0.1146</b></td>
 <td><b>860.00000</b></td>
 <td><b>66.65 CAD</b></td>
</tr>

The relevant point being the 860.00 . I am looking to build this into a script which can send me an email to alert me of certain price differentials compared to other exchanges.

I'm quite noobie so if in your explanations you could offer your thought process on why you've done certain things it would be very much appreciated.

Thank you in advance!

Edit: This is what I have so far which will return me the name of the title correctly, I'm having trouble grabbing the table data though.

import urllib2, sys
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

site= "http://cavirtex.com/orderbook"
hdr = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0'}
req = urllib2.Request(site,headers=hdr)
page = urllib2.urlopen(req)
soup = BeautifulSoup(page)
print soup.title



Here is the code for scraping the lowest bid from the 'Buying BTC' table:

from selenium import webdriver

fp = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
browser = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=fp)
browser.get('http://www.cavirtex.com/orderbook')

lowest_bid = float('inf')
elements = browser.find_elements_by_xpath('//div[@id="orderbook_buy"]/table/tbody/tr/td')

for element in elements:
    text = element.get_attribute('innerHTML').strip('<b>|</b>')
    try:
        bid = float(text)
        if lowest_bid > bid:
            lowest_bid = bid
    except:
        pass

browser.quit()
print lowest_bid

In order to install Selenium for Python on your Windows-PC, run from a command line:

pip install selenium (or pip install selenium --upgrade if you already have it).

If you want the 'Selling BTC' table instead, then change "orderbook_buy" to "orderbook_sell".

If you want the 'Last Trades' table instead, then change "orderbook_buy" to "orderbook_trades".

Note:

If you consider performance critical, then you can implement the data-scraping via URL-Connection instead of Selenium, and have your program running much faster. However, your code will probably end up being a lot "messier", due to the tedious XML parsing that you'll be obliged to apply...

Here is the code for sending the previous output in an email from yourself to yourself:

import smtplib,ssl

def SendMail(username,password,contents):
    server = Connect(username)
    try:
        server.login(username,password)
        server.sendmail(username,username,contents)
    except smtplib.SMTPException,error:
        Print(error)
    Disconnect(server)

def Connect(username):
    serverName = username[username.index("@")+1:username.index(".")]
    while True:
        try:
            server = smtplib.SMTP(serverDict[serverName])
        except smtplib.SMTPException,error:
            Print(error)
            continue
        try:
            server.ehlo()
            if server.has_extn("starttls"):
                server.starttls()
                server.ehlo()
        except (smtplib.SMTPException,ssl.SSLError),error:
            Print(error)
            Disconnect(server)
            continue
        break
    return server

def Disconnect(server):
    try:
        server.quit()
    except smtplib.SMTPException,error:
        Print(error)

serverDict = {
    "gmail"  :"smtp.gmail.com",
    "hotmail":"smtp.live.com",
    "yahoo"  :"smtp.mail.yahoo.com"
}

SendMail("your_username@your_provider.com","your_password",str(lowest_bid))

The above code should work if your email provider is either gmail or hotmail or yahoo.

Please note that depending on your firewall configuration, it may ask your permission upon the first time you try it...



Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21217034/scrape-data-point-using-python

Has It Been Done Before? Optimize Your Patent Search Using Patent Scraping Technology

Has it been done before? Optimize your Patent Search using Patent Scraping Technology.

Since the US patent office opened in 1790, inventors across the United States have been submitting all sorts of great products and half-baked ideas to their database. Nowadays, many individuals get ideas for great products only to have the patent office do a patent search and tell them that their ideas have already been patented by someone else! Herin lies a question: How do I perform a patent search to find out if my invention has already been patented before I invest time and money into developing it?

The US patent office patent search database is available to anyone with internet access.

US Patent Search Homepage
Performing a patent search with the patent searching tools on the US Patent office webpage can prove to be a very time consuming process. For example, patent searching the database for "dog" and "food" yields 5745 patent search results. The straight-forward approach to investigating the patent search results for your particular idea is to go through all 5745 results one at a time looking for yours. Get some munchies and settle in, this could take a while! The patent search database sorts results by patent number instead of relevancy. This means that if your idea was recently patented, you will find it near the top but if it wasn't, you could be searching for quite a while. Also, most patent search results have images associated with them. Downloading and displaying these images over the internet can be very time consuming depending on you internet connection and the availability of the patent search database servers.

Because patent searches take such a long time, many companies and organizations are looking ways to improve the process. Some organizations and companies will hire employees for the sole purpose of performing patent searches for them. Others contract out the job to small business that specialize in patent searches. The latest technology for performing patent searches is called patent scraping.

Patent scraping is the process of writing computer automated scripts that analyze a website and copy only the content you are interested in into easily accessible databases or spreadsheets on your computer. Because it is a computerized script performing the patent search, you don't need a separate employee to get the data, you can let it run the patent scraping while you perform other important tasks! Patent scraping technology can also extract text content from images. By saving the images and textual content to your computer, you can then very efficiently search them for content and relevancy; thus saving you lots of time that could be better spent actually inventing something!

To put a real-world face on this, let us consider the pharmaceutical industry. Many different companies are competing for the patent on the next big drug. It has become an indispensible tactic of the industry for one company to perform patent searches for what patents the other companies are applying for, thus learning in which direction the research and development team of the other company is taking them. Using this information, the company can then choose to either pursue that direction heavily, or spin off in a different direction. It would quickly become very costly to maintain a team of researchers dedicated to only performing patent searches all day. Patent scraping technology is the means for figuring out what ideas and technologies are coming about before they make headline news. It is by utilizing patent scraping technology that the large companies stay up to date on the latest trends in technology.

While some companies choose to hire their own programming team to do their patent scraping scripts for them, it is much more cost effective to contract out the job to a qualified team of programmers dedicated to performing such services.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Has-It-Been-Done-Before?-Optimize-Your-Patent-Search-Using-Patent-Scraping-Technology&id=171000

How Your Online Information is Stolen - The Art of Web Scraping and Data Harvesting

Web scraping, also known as web/internet harvesting involves the use of a computer program which is able to extract data from another program's display output. The main difference between standard parsing and web scraping is that in it, the output being scraped is meant for display to its human viewers instead of simply input to another program.

Therefore, it isn't generally document or structured for practical parsing. Generally web scraping will require that binary data be ignored - this usually means multimedia data or images - and then formatting the pieces that will confuse the desired goal - the text data. This means that in actually, optical character recognition software is a form of visual web scraper.

Usually a transfer of data occurring between two programs would utilize data structures designed to be processed automatically by computers, saving people from having to do this tedious job themselves. This usually involves formats and protocols with rigid structures that are therefore easy to parse, well documented, compact, and function to minimize duplication and ambiguity. In fact, they are so "computer-based" that they are generally not even readable by humans.

If human readability is desired, then the only automated way to accomplish this kind of a data transfer is by way of web scraping. At first, this was practiced in order to read the text data from the display screen of a computer. It was usually accomplished by reading the memory of the terminal via its auxiliary port, or through a connection between one computer's output port and another computer's input port.

It has therefore become a kind of way to parse the HTML text of web pages. The web scraping program is designed to process the text data that is of interest to the human reader, while identifying and removing any unwanted data, images, and formatting for the web design.

Though web scraping is often done for ethical reasons, it is frequently performed in order to swipe the data of "value" from another person or organization's website in order to apply it to someone else's - or to sabotage the original text altogether. Many efforts are now being put into place by webmasters in order to prevent this form of theft and vandalism.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Your-Online-Information-is-Stolen---The-Art-of-Web-Scraping-and-Data-Harvesting&id=923976

Online Data Entry - How Online Data Entry is Useful in Business?

In last article about "Online Data Entry Projects - Grab An Online Audience by Data Entry", I mentioned some newly provoked ideas which are currently outsourced by various companies around the world such as United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Canada and Others. In this article, I emphasize on some symbolized and basic online data entry techniques that most of the businesses require. Here we go:

Online Compilation from Websites: Company requires a huge amount of information to run business smoothly. You require details of raw material suppliers, Machine suppliers, maintenance service vendor, product dispenser and many more. If company executive have compiled information, they can act promptly and complete the task quickly. Online websites are great source to search for particular details. By outsourcing online compilation from website task to some reputed data entry company, you can get highly accurate information that helps you in taking powerful decisions.

Online Business Card Entry: Business Cards are much helpful not only in getting a better idea about business of someone but also getting the contact information easily. Sometimes it happens that you misplace the business card when you require it urgently. If you have entered business card information in your PC, you can easily search for such. You can quickly contact the needed person and solve your queries promptly.

Online Catalog Data Entry: Catalog is the most powerful tool to sell your products. If you don't have informative and attractive catalog, you can not convert your viewers into customers. It is also possible that you are avoiding online potential customer by not uploading your catalog online. However, online catalog data entry can be the solution for such need. Insert good amount of information in your catalog and attract more visitors. You can get not only good business from this but also provoke your brand.

Online Survey Form Entry: Survey is very important tool to check the mindset of customers. The data mention in survey forms are very important while upgrading product, emerging into new field, changing strategy, branding and marketing products. The information is only useful if it is precise and quickly available. Online survey form entry can help you in making surveyed information organized so that you can clearly divert your focus on right direction.

These are various online data typing projects which are helpful for your business to generate more efficient environment and increase the productivity and profitability. You can meet high goals with efficient environment and increased productivity.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Online-Data-Entry---How-Online-Data-Entry-is-Useful-in-Business?&id=4505450

Collecting and Managing Data for Small Businesses

Is your company doing well? Are you profitable? How much longer will it be until you are? Where can you cut expenses? What are your most profitable products or services? Which are the least profitable? What the shelf-life of a particular product? How effective is your marketing strategy?

As business leaders, this type of information is the type of information that we need to have on hand in order to make decisions about the company. Planning solely on what is in the bank, or focusing only on one aspect of what makes your company a) successful or b) keeps it out of closing is a very poor way of operating. This is pure tunnel vision.

If you consider, for a moment, two tools that are widely used in the business world - Porter's Five Forces and the SWOT analysis, you'll notice that part of the analysis is based on things that impact the business - are outside of the business's control. As business leaders, you know that strategically, this cannot occur just in exercise, but must exist in the way that you do business. Monitoring, making adjustments and acting must be an ongoing mentality if your goal is to build an extraordinary business. Several recommendations we have made to clients include:

    Understand what questions you want to answer. Here are some samples:

    How do we know when we can purchase a new building or expand capacity

    How do we know how effective our sales people are

    How do we know how effective our marketing and other business development activities are

    Understand what kind of data you need to collect in order to make your decisions. Typically, these are going to be things such as your financials - sales, cost of goods sold, expenses, profit, investments, interest and taxes, your business development activities, manufacturing costs and rates, etc.

    Determine how to collect the data - including what is feasible. Take into consideration how you operate - does it need to be mobile? does the information need to be housed in a cloud?

    Determine how the data needs to be delivered. If you have a ton of data and like to drill down from "high level" analysis down to the details, perhaps you want something more visual. If you like to play with the numbers yourself and run scenarios, perhaps you like to play with the raw data.

•    Decide how much your level of investment. Consider this:

•    No Investment - If you don't get the data to make decisions, the likelihood of success is minimalized.

•    Your Time - If you collect and mine the data yourself, what else could or should you be doing to build or grow the business.

•    Your Resources - You could have a qualified employee collect and mine the data for you.

•    Your Money - You could invest in a software solution - be it customized, off the shelf, or a combination of the two - that could collect the data. We have used and recommend a product called Work, Etc., to centrally house most transaction that occur in the business in order to give us a single data-collection source.

    Research solutions that will work best for your company, considering the factors we pointed out above. You may consider other factors that are specific to your company, such as the ability to sync with certain existing solutions or the ability to be housed on a centrally located or remote server, etc.. May companies look at Open Source solutions such as xTurple or SugarCRM. Despite your choice, consider the total cost of ownership of the solution before investing in it.

    Determine how the solution will be implemented and how training on the software will roll out. This may mean hiring a consultant, going to a class or classes, investing in an online training solution or spending time with tech support for a self-install. Consider the different types of investment.

    Plan to re-enforce the need to use whatever solution is recommended. Change takes time. Habits take time. By providing some structure, you will increase the likelihood of success.

Your company's ability to collect and decipher the data from the activities in and around your company can be the determine factor between a series of successful ventures and a series of hit-or-miss activities. Even the simplest data-collection activities should help you determine your company's path.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Collecting-and-Managing-Data-for-Small-Businesses&id=6923386

Data Entry Outsourcing - Important Part of Data Entry Services

It is rightly said if you try to manage everything you end up managing nothing. The business environment, these days, is very competitive. Requirements and technology change by a wink of an eye. It is imperative for any business to keep abreast of the technological and business environment changes. This requires a more focused and strategic approach towards primary function of the business.

Over the years the corporate have become selective on the business processes they put their time and money on. This calls for an arrangement where in the managers can concentrate on their core competencies and get the supporting operations done by someone else. The answer to all this is Outsourcing. Outsourcing means getting some portion of the service, operations, or business done through some other organization that is more familiar with this work.

Data is by far the most important asset of any business. However, before businesses could use the data, it has to be fed in to the computers. Mostly businesses outsource this act of Data Processing for multiple benefits. Firstly, the companies could do away with this tedious task and hence could invest their time and effort on more important things. Secondly, the company or the freelancer to whom the work is outsourced is a specialist in the job and hence the work is completed with more precision and with lower turnaround time. Another benefit is that the data entry work might be for some duration and need not continue for a life time, in such a scenario the company gets away from arranging people and infrastructure for the data entry job.

Having discussed the need to outsource the Data, another important aspect to cover in this domain is the efficiency of the agency to which the work is outsourced. Business houses should do their homework before selecting the service provider. Apart from the work experience and the quality of the people, confidentiality should always be kept on top of the agenda. Business houses may have at face the brunt In case of leakage or misuse of the sensitive information. It is imperative for the service providers to ensure the best security measures at the work place.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Entry-Outsourcing---Important-Part-of-Data-Entry-Services&id=5255220