How to Scrape Websites with PhantomJS in Python
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Contents
In this article, you will learn how to scrape websites with PhantomJS in Python.
How to Scrape Websites with PhantomJS
PhantomJS is a headless browser that can be used for web scraping. Here’s a simple example of how to scrape a website using PhantomJS in Python:
Install the necessary libraries:
pip install selenium
Install PhantomJS:
You can download the PhantomJS executable from the official website:
http://phantomjs.org/download.htmlOnce downloaded, extract the contents of the archive to a directory of your choice.
Import the necessary libraries and start a PhantomJS session:
from selenium import webdriver
# Start a PhantomJS session
driver = webdriver.PhantomJS('/path/to/phantomjs')
Replace “/path/to/phantomjs” with the actual path to the PhantomJS executable on your system.
Navigate to the website you want to scrape:
# Navigate to the website
driver.get('https://www.example.com')
Extract the data from the website:
You can use the find_element_by_* methods to locate elements on the page, and the get_attribute method to extract attributes such as text or links:
# Find an element and extract its text
element = driver.find_element_by_css_selector('#my-element')
print(element.text)
# Find a link and extract its URL
link = driver.find_element_by_css_selector('#my-link')
print(link.get_attribute('href'))
Close the PhantomJS session:
# Close the PhantomJS session
driver.quit()
With these steps, you can scrape websites using PhantomJS in Python. Note that web scraping can be a sensitive topic and you should always be aware of the website’s terms of use and avoid scraping private or sensitive data.