In this course, you'll discover how Python can automate repetitive tasks and collect data from the web with efficiency. You'll learn how to gather current information from websites, which proves especially useful across areas like social media, e-commerce, real estate, travel, or market research. The focus stays on practical automation, helping you save time and gain faster access to the data you need to make informed decisions. This course is ideal for programming beginners who want to get into coding, especially those interested in using Python for web scraping and software development.
As you move through the material, you'll work hands-on with Python to extract specific data from web pages, write loops to process large sets of information, and build scripts that run automatically on a schedule. You'll also learn how to troubleshoot common coding issues, store scraped data in different formats, and even use Python to update Excel files automatically. Built with beginners in mind, the course offers a clear entry point into programming while building real skills in automation and web scraping.
What You Will Learn
- Understand how websites are structured with HTML and CSS to locate and extract specific data
- Build a foundation in Python fundamentals, including variables, data types, conditionals, loops, and working with lists
- Use the Requests and Beautiful Soup libraries to scrape web content and target the information you need
- Write loops to automate data collection across multiple web pages and cut down on repetitive manual work
- Save scraped data in common formats such as text files and CSVs for analysis and reporting
- Schedule Python scripts to run automatically, supporting ongoing data collection and hands-off workflows
Course Outline
Section 1
Introduction to HTML/CSS (Online)
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How a website is served
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Anatomy of a web page
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HTML tags
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IDs
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CSS classes
Python Part 1
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Integers + Floats
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Variables
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Strings
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Methods + Functions
Section 2
Webscraping Exercise Part 1
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Introduction to using packages
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Requests packages
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Performing a GET request
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String manipulation
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Debugging a Python script
Python Part 2
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Booleans
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Conditional Statements
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Lists
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Indexing into strings + lists
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Looping over lists
Section 3
Webscraping Exercises Part 2
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Beautiful Soup package
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Honing in on data
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Common webscraping pitfalls
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Using loops in webscraping
Storage and Scheduling
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Text files
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CSVs
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Scheduling a Python Script
This course is available for 30 days. You can choose when to start your access period. Once you activate, you will have 30 days to complete it (access the course materials, quizzes, projects and videos). You may request one extension of seven (7) days. Other extension requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Videos are not downloadable.
