13 awesome videos about Web Scrapping Tutorials – Absolutely free of cost!

Introduction

Web scraping becomes a helpful web tactic for digital marketers, analyzers, and web development professionals. Being a professional developer might inspire you a lot to improve the coding language into the latest web programming world but it is quite chaotic to do all things from scratch.

In such kind of case, the developers can have some awesome facilities from technologies to alleviate your development work and HTML Agility Pack is a favorite itself. In this Tutorial, you could accomplish the extraction of text, capturing images, Data scraping, favicon extraction, Data Mining, and Meta information, etc.

What’s HTML Agility Pack?

The HTML Agility Pack is one significant library that allows a C# developer all the facilities to perform DOM loading or data extracting or data mining and parsing easily.

Installation of HTML Agility pack C# (HAP)

The first step of web scraping is to install the HTML agility pack through the appropriate method.

Here you need to download and install the HTML agility pack from the site if nugget. Without proper installation, you can’t move ahead with the HTML Agility Pack program.

Also, for better assistance in a practical approach, go through the video (1).

How to start using the HAP

After successful installation now you need to add HAP DLL file reference throughout the solution explorer that is located in the sidebar of the Visual Studio Application. After clicking on ‘Add reference’ and a context menu will appear.

The next task is to click on the browser button from the window of Reference Manager and point out the location of HAP dll in your computer and select it. Now press ok and come back to the code area of the visual studio application interface.

Without HAP.dll (Html Agility Pack), the web scrapping task couldn’t be progressed at all. Hence, you need to add HAP.dll carefully.

Following are the applications using the Html agility pack

How to extract all Href value from HTML Document

After loading of HTML pack, you can jump to extract HREF values from different websites. With the help of the video(2) with respect to HTML Agility  Pack Web Extraction, you would be able to extract Href value i.e. Anchor tag values to collect linked site or pages or email ids, etc. at a glance. Hence, you could save your time by collecting Href value from the multiple sites at once within a short period.

Extraction of Href values can let you know some advanced features of links or anchor tags to incorporate some new features of Href tags and your Href experience could be matured with some new ideas.

How to Extract Links From Web Page using HTML Agility Pack C#

Unlike extraction of Href values, you’ll be able to extract different inbound and outbound backlinks and other email id links through the HTML Agility Pack C#. You may refer to this tutorial for easier coding or can take the assistance of the video(3) for better guidance. This coding skill especially helps digital marketing professionals.

For digital marketing strategy and analysis, these links are very much useful. They can plan some fruitful new marketing ideas and grow their online visitors as well as search engine rankings.

Extract Meta Information from the website using Html agility pack

After learning how to extract links from different websites, it’s time to know how metatag information could be easily collected from different websites. Meta information is the core information about your webpage which could be easily crawled by the Google crawler.  Go through the page Extract Meta Information and know-how to collect some creative metatags with respect to different topics and

Through the above example that has been provided here, you are now in a position to scrape websites using an HTML agility pack. You can also get assistance from the video(4) for more help.

How to Select Nodes using Html Agility Pack (HAP)

Node selection is an excellent activity for developers to fulfill multiple requirements.

We know, HTML is basically a language of Document Object Model (DOM) and has tree model nodes. As per your need, you can organize it and make your navigation easier and smoother. Sometimes, it is mandatory to select the nodes for the XPath or other times, it might be the need for just one node.

Check the page for detailed Node selection using HAP (HTML Agility Pack method)

You need to go through the following steps

• SelectNodes()
• SelectSingleNode(String)
  

Still, you need more guidance, just Check the video(5) for the successful accomplishment of a sample program.

HTML Manipulation using Html agility pack C# (HAP)

Hoe now you must have a better knowledge about Select node application using the HAP method. Now, we’ll proceed towards the HTML Manipulation using HAP helps the developers manipulate the HTML pages without downloading them. Sometimes servers may face traffic and uptime issues and uploading may create issues of rank down on Google or other search engines. Hence, HTML page manipulation would be more valuable for an ideal digital marketing strategy and effective server running or website running tactic.

Without downloading the HTML pages or login into control panels, editing HTML pages is definitely possible without any disturbance of uptime or downtime which ultimately allows developers to implement some new changes instantly. Need more help? Just go through the video (6) for better knowledge.

HTML Traversing (Parent and child Node) Html using Agility Pack C#

 Unlike HTML manipulation, you need to know about HTML traversing is almost a similar activity using HTM Agility Pack C#. At times, there might be an inevitability to access a specific element and there is only a small number of possibilities to get it from the DOM-based HTML pages along with potential content. Here you’ll have sufficient knowledge about Parent and Child nodes.

Go through the video (7) of HTML Traversing (Parent Node) Html using Agility Pack C#.    

HTML Traversing (Next Sibling) using Agility Pack C#    

After gaining enough knowledge about Parent and child node HTML traversing, it’s time to know more about how to go to Next siblings and you need to take assistance from this video (8)for improvement in Node selection.

Siblings' Html terminology is applicable to those specific elements which have the same parent node. Basically, two types of Siblings relationships are available such as Adjacent and General. These node or terminal selectors are definitely, key facilitators to select the essential elements anyhow.

This equivalent ease of use is leveraged in C# from HAP methodology throughout the NextSibling approach. It’s an absolutely public method that returns the node which right away follows the current element.

This method when functional on the variable that contains the HTML node returns the sibling element that is available following next to it under the same parent node.

How to Extract Image Source using XPath

After traversing nodes, it’s time to learn how to capture all images from the website through C# HAP methodology. Collecting multiple images from a single HTML page at a glance is possible through the XML path method. XPath has more than 200 valuable built-in functions to capture various images from different HTML pages. For detailed information and steps go through this page.

How to Extract Image Source using Regex C#

In comparison to the Xpath method, Regex is a more critical and tricky one. You can take more practical guidance from this video (9) to extract image sources through C# HAP. When we need a huge volume of images for any E-commerce website at the time of development, we can access all the images from some reputed E-commerce sites and can incorporate them into the website with some little modification.
Mainly, image extraction helps web developers make mock designs within a short period of time because of the ready availability of images. If you have already written a program for image extraction, you need to just input the URL or product name and you’ll get the images instantly. In search engines, only the images of ranked websites could be obtained whereas the images from some types of targeted websites could be obtained. Even you can obtain images from those websites, who have strictly prohibited copy or cut activities.

Convert UL List into String using HTML Agility Pack C#

After extraction, here you’ll come to know how to convert UL lists i.e. Bulleted lists or numbered lists into String through HTML Agility Pack and can extract information in that format. Go through the given video (10) for better practical knowledge to write a sample program code.
UL-listed data with Bullets or numbers could be extracted easily throughout this HAP coding program. Everything will be at an appropriate place as per their existing sequence and can be extracted in order to get them used for our own requirement. The sequence and style won’t be changed and you can use them in your websites or for any other purposes instantly without any extra work.

Search Specific Text from HTML using HTML Agility Pack C#

In order to extract content using Regex pattern is much tricky and it depends upon the expertise of the developer how he could understand and perform the coding task. Sometimes, some WebPages are not easily identifiable on the web or you might not get the exact web page because of the change of domains. Here, the use of HAP could reduce your task and may filter some specific web pages with the reference of the specific text given by you.
The research analyst mostly uses these features to accomplish their mission for any specific project and task given by the needy person. Here, no word of failure is available because of the efficient HAP application. You can have all the required text within a short period of time from bulk information. You can take the assistance of the video (11) for better guidance.

How to extract favicon from the website using HTML Agility Pack C#

Extracting favicon is meant for extracting an icon that refers to a shortcut for a website, tab, URL, or bookmarks. Hence, extracting the huge numbers of icons could be accomplished within a short period with the help of the C# HAP method.  
From the linked video(12), you can have some practical ideas about favicon extraction.

How to parse HTML table through HTML Agility Pack C#

It’s a very tedious task to copy the huge tabular data from multiple Html pages and the C# HAP method has made it easier and simpler by providing a specific platform. Here find the steps to write C# codes for parsing HTML table using HAP C#. Copying or editing a big size HTML table is easily possible through HAP-coded applications and the work burden could be lowered down from the end-users for day-to-day data update requirements.
Need more practical guidelines, go through this video (13)and accomplish your sample program to parse the HTML table using HTML Agility Pack C#. But be careful, you need to concentrate on row numbers and column numbers at the time of parsing to execute a flawless output. Your time will have a better utility and the real worth of HAP could be realized by you. Since most of the tables of the websites are unseen to naked eyes; you need to check the existence of tables thoroughly to avoid any inconvenience. So, your purpose of parsing table could be successfully accomplished with the help of HAP and you’ll be gaining the maximum advantages of HAP.
 Hope now you could do web scraping independently and also know the advantages and disadvantages to avoid any inconvenience. Even though there’re several web developers who work on web scrapping, but few become expert because of the proper utility of web scrapping technology and creativity and the right methodology.
Hope now you could do web scraping independently and also know the advantages and disadvantages to avoid any inconvenience. Even though there’re several web developers who work on web scrapping, but few become experts because of the proper utility of web scraping technology and creativity, and the right methodology.
But, some wrong coding may misguide you towards some wrong output and your entire target may be failed because of the wrong coding and inappropriate methodology. Hence, check all the key factors of Web Scraping before jumping into HTML Agility Pack. Your purpose of Web Scrapping could be fulfilled easily with the help of HAP technology.

Conclusion

The readers, as well as developers, are suggested to keep the focus on the basic format of HTM Agility Pack in C# language so that they could easily learn the difference between the coding structures for different purposes. Learning HAP will be much easier when you’ll have the basic structure and namespaces.