How to scrape data using ParsehHub

Web scraping is the best method to gather data from websites. Scraping tools such as ParseHub can be used to scrape websites easily. It provides a lot of features that can be overwhelming for a new user but can be helpful once they know how to use it. We will show you how to scrape data from Wikipedia using ParseHub.

Prerequisites

To get started, first you need to download the ParseHub app. Visit the ParseHub download page which contains the links for download in Windows, Mac, and Linux (it also works as a Firefox extension). After installation, wait for the app to finish its first run and load fully. You will be greeted with a tutorial that will cover the basics of ParseHub and how to use it. You can complete the tutorial if you are a complete beginner to scraping.

Starting a Project and Selecting Elements

All you need to do is enter the website you need to scrape and click on ‘Start Project’. Then click on the ‘+’ button to select a page or title. After selecting and naming all the fields you require, you will get a CSV/XLSX or JSON sample result.

Downloading the Data

Click on ‘Get Data’ and ParseHub will scrape the website and fetch your data. When the data is ready you will see CSV and JSON options to download your results.

If you choose a test run, it will run the first few pages in your local machine. You can choose ‘Run’ and it will run the scraper in ParseHub’s servers. You can also schedule the run, but that will require you to have a premium account.

If the websites to scrape are complex or you need a lot of data from one or more sites, this tool may not scale well. You can consider using open source web scraping tools to build your own scraper, to crawl the web and extract data. To create a custom web scraper for a particular website you can check out our tutorial section: Web Scraping Tutorials