By Max Programming, LLC. Web Dumper is a Mac utility that enables you to download website copies to your local folders for offline access. The application supports batch processing, lets you fetch various types of files from the selected webpages, and is localized. Download WebCopier - Seamlessly download websites full with links, images as well as pages and access them later from your local drives using using this powerful offline browser. Web development occurs in different environments and has to be tested on multiple platforms. So a website ripper that fits all platforms will be a boon for the developers. Scrapbook, Web copy, Mozilla achieve format, HTTrack etc., are some of the excellent tools that are compatible with multiple platforms. Site Sucker for Mac. Website Downloader, Website Copier or Website Ripper allows you to download websites from the Internet to your local hard drive on your own computer. Website Downloader arranges the downloaded site by the original websites relative link-structure. The downloaded website can be browsed by opening one of the HTML pages in a browser.
How much do you know about web scraping? No worries, this article will brief you on the basics of web scraping, how to access a web scraping tool to get a tool that perfectly matches your needs, and last but not least, present you with a list of web scraping tools for your reference.
Table of Content
Web Scraping And How It Is Used
Web scraping is a way of gathering data from web pages with a scraping bot, hence the whole process is done in an automated way. The technique allows people to obtain web data at a large scale fast. In the meantime, instruments like Regex (Regular Expression) enable data cleaning during the scraping process, which means people can get well-structured clean data one-stop.
How does web scraping work?
- Firstly, a web scraping bot simulates the act of human browsing the website. With the target URL entered, it sends a request to the server and gets information back in the HTML file.
- Next, with the HTML source code at hand, the bot is able to reach the node where target data lies and parse the data as it is commanded in the scraping code.
- Lastly, (based on how the scraping bot is configured) the cluster of scraped data will be cleaned, put into a structure, and ready for download or transference to your database.
How To Choose A Web Scraping Tool
There are ways to get access to web data. Even though you have narrowed it down to a web scraping tool, tools popped up in the search results with all confusing features still can make a decision hard to reach.
There are a few dimensions you may take into consideration before choosing a web scraping tool:
- Device: if you are a Mac or Linux user, you should make sure the tool support your system.
- Cloud service: cloud service is important if you want to access your data across devices anytime.
- Integration: how you would use the data later on? Integration options enable better automation of the whole process of dealing with data.
- Training: if you do not excel at programming, better make sure there are guides and support to help you throughout the data scraping journey.
- Pricing: yep, the cost of a tool shall always be taken into consideration and it varies a lot among different venders.
Now you may want to know what web scraping tools to choose from:
Three Types of Scraping Tool
There are many free web scraping tools. However, not all web scraping software is for non-programmers. The lists below are the best web scraping tools without coding skills at a low cost. The freeware listed below is easy to pick up and would satisfy most scraping needs with a reasonable amount of data requirement.
Web Scraping Tools Client-based
1. Octoparse
Site Copier
Octoparse is a robust web scraping tool that also provides web scraping services for business owners and enterprises.
- Device: As it can be installed on both Windows and Mac OS, users can scrape data with apple devices.
- Data: Web data extraction for social media, e-commerce, marketing, real-estate listing, etc.
- Function:
- handle both static and dynamic websites with AJAX, JavaScript, cookies, etc.
- extract data from a complex website that requires login and pagination.
- deal with information that is not showing on the websites by parsing the source code.
Website Copier Software
- Use cases: As a result, you can achieve automatic inventories tracking, price monitoring, and leads generation within your fingertips.
Octoparse offers different options for users with different levels of coding skills.
- The Task Template Mode enables non-coding users to turn web pages into some structured data instantly. On average, it only takes about 6.5 seconds to pull down the data behind one page and allows you to download the data to Excel. Check out what templates are most popular.
- The Advanced mode has more flexibility. This allows users to configure and edit the workflow with more options. Advance mode is used for scraping more complex websites with a massive amount of data.
- The brand newAuto-detection feature allows you to build a crawler with one click. If you are not satisfied with the auto-generated data fields, you can always customize the scraping task to let itscrape the data for you.
- The cloud services enable large data extraction within a short time frame as multiple cloud servers concurrently are running for one task. Besides that, thecloud servicewill allow you to store and retrieve the data at any time.
2. ParseHub
Parsehub is a web scraper that collects data from websites using AJAX technologies, JavaScript, cookies and etc. Parsehub leverages machine learning technology which is able to read, analyze and transform web documents into relevant data.
- Device: The desktop application of Parsehub supports systems such as Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, or you can use the browser extension to achieve instant scraping.
- Pricing: It is not fully free, but you still can set up to five scraping tasks for free. The paid subscription plan allows you to set up at least 20 private projects.
- Tutorial: There are plenty of tutorials at Parsehub and you can get more information from the homepage.
3. Import.io
Import.io is a SaaS web data integration software. It provides a visual environment for end-users to design and customize the workflows for harvesting data. It covers the entire web extraction lifecycle from data extraction to analysis within one platform. And you can easily integrate into other systems as well.
- Function: large-scale data scraping, capture photos and PDFs in a feasible format
- Integration: integration with data analysis tools
- Pricing: the price of the service is only presented through consultation case by case
Web Scraping Plugins/Extension
1. Data Scraper (Chrome)
Data Scraper can scrape data from tables and listing type data from a single web page. Its free plan should satisfy most simple scraping with a light amount of data. The paid plan has more features such as API and many anonymous IP proxies. You can fetch a large volume of data in real-time faster. You can scrape up to 500 pages per month, you need to upgrade to a paid plan.
2. Web scraper
Web scraper has a chrome extension and cloud extension.
- For the chrome extension version, you can create a sitemap (plan) on how a website should be navigated and what data should be scrapped.
- The cloud extension is can scrape a large volume of data and run multiple scraping tasks concurrently. You can export the data in CSV, or store the data into Couch DB.
3. Scraper (Chrome)
The scraper is another easy-to-use screen web scraper that can easily extract data from an online table, and upload the result to Google Docs.
Just select some text in a table or a list, right-click on the selected text, and choose 'Scrape Similar' from the browser menu. Then you will get the data and extract other content by adding new columns using XPath or JQuery. This tool is intended for intermediate to advanced users who know how to write XPath.
4. Outwit hub(Firefox)
Outwit hub is a Firefox extension, and it can be easily downloaded from the Firefox add-ons store. Once installed and activated, you can scrape the content from websites instantly.
- Function: It has outstanding 'Fast Scrape' features, which quickly scrapes data from a list of URLs that you feed in. Extracting data from sites using Outwit hub doesn’t demand programming skills.
- Training: The scraping process is fairly easy to pick up. Users can refer to their guides to get started with web scraping using the tool.
Outwit Hub also offers services of tailor-making scrapers.
Web-based Scraping Application
Best Website Copier
1. Dexi.io (formerly known as Cloud scrape)
Dexi.io is intended for advanced users who have proficient programming skills. It has three types of robots for you to create a scraping task - Extractor, Crawler, and Pipes. It provides various tools that allow you to extract the data more precisely. With its modern feature, you will be able to address the details on any website. With no programming skills, you may need to take a while to get used to it before creating a web scraping robot. Check out their homepage to learn more about the knowledge base.
The freeware provides anonymous web proxy servers for web scraping. Extracted data will be hosted on Dexi.io’s servers for two weeks before being archived, or you can directly export the extracted data to JSON or CSV files. It offers paid services to meet your needs for getting real-time data.
Website Copier Ripper
2. Webhose.io
Webhose.io enables you to get real-time data from scraping online sources from all over the world into various, clean formats. You even can scrape information on the dark web. This web scraper allows you to scrape data in many different languages using multiple filters and export scraped data in XML, JSON, and RSS formats.
The freeware offers a free subscription plan for you to make 1000 HTTP requests per month and paid subscription plans to make more HTTP requests per month to suit your web scraping needs.
Author: Ashley Ashley is a data enthusiast and passionate blogger with hands-on experience in web scraping. She focuses on capturing web data and analyzing in a way that empowers companies and businesses with actionable insights. Read her blog here to discover practical tips and applications on web data extraction 日本語記事：無料で使えるWebスクレイピングツール９選 Artikel auf Deutsch: 9 kostenlose Web Scraper, die Sie im Jahr 2021 nicht verpassen können |