Scraping an Online Movie Website

Darrius Serrant

January 19, 2023

Updated October 20, 2024

Let’s start another example from a real world website. We'll choose to scrape a movie website.

Let’s add a new class and name it “MovieScraper”:

Now let’s take a look on the site that we will scrape:

This is part of the homepage HTML we see on the website:

<div id="movie-featured" class="movies-list movies-list-full tab-pane in fade active">
    <div data-movie-id="20746" class="ml-item">
        <a href="https://website.com/film/king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword-20746/">
            <span class="mli-quality">CAM</span>
            <img data-original="https://img.gocdn.online/2017/05/16/poster/2116d6719c710eabe83b377463230fbe-king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword.jpg" 
                 class="lazy thumb mli-thumb" alt="King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"
                  src="https://img.gocdn.online/2017/05/16/poster/2116d6719c710eabe83b377463230fbe-king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword.jpg" 
                 style="display: inline-block;">
            <span class="mli-info"><h2>King Arthur: Legend of the Sword</h2></span>
        </a>
    </div>
    <div data-movie-id="20724" class="ml-item">
        <a href="https://website.com/film/snatched-20724/" >
            <span class="mli-quality">CAM</span>
            <img data-original="https://img.gocdn.online/2017/05/16/poster/5ef66403dc331009bdb5aa37cfe819ba-snatched.jpg" 
                 class="lazy thumb mli-thumb" alt="Snatched" 
                 src="https://img.gocdn.online/2017/05/16/poster/5ef66403dc331009bdb5aa37cfe819ba-snatched.jpg" 
                 style="display: inline-block;">
            <span class="mli-info"><h2>Snatched</h2></span>
        </a>
    </div>
</div>

<div id="movie-featured" class="movies-list movies-list-full tab-pane in fade active">
    <div data-movie-id="20746" class="ml-item">
        <a href="https://website.com/film/king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword-20746/">
            <span class="mli-quality">CAM</span>
            <img data-original="https://img.gocdn.online/2017/05/16/poster/2116d6719c710eabe83b377463230fbe-king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword.jpg" 
                 class="lazy thumb mli-thumb" alt="King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"
                  src="https://img.gocdn.online/2017/05/16/poster/2116d6719c710eabe83b377463230fbe-king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword.jpg" 
                 style="display: inline-block;">
            <span class="mli-info"><h2>King Arthur: Legend of the Sword</h2></span>
        </a>
    </div>
    <div data-movie-id="20724" class="ml-item">
        <a href="https://website.com/film/snatched-20724/" >
            <span class="mli-quality">CAM</span>
            <img data-original="https://img.gocdn.online/2017/05/16/poster/5ef66403dc331009bdb5aa37cfe819ba-snatched.jpg" 
                 class="lazy thumb mli-thumb" alt="Snatched" 
                 src="https://img.gocdn.online/2017/05/16/poster/5ef66403dc331009bdb5aa37cfe819ba-snatched.jpg" 
                 style="display: inline-block;">
            <span class="mli-info"><h2>Snatched</h2></span>
        </a>
    </div>
</div>

HTML

As we can see, we have a movie ID, Title, and Link to Detailed Page.

Let’s start to scrape this set of data:

public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";
        this.Request("www.website.com", Parse);
    }
    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        foreach (var Divs in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (Divs.Attributes ["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var MovieId = Divs.GetAttribute("data-movie-id");
                var link = Divs.Css("a")[0];
                var MovieTitle = link.TextContentClean;
                Scrape(new ScrapedData() { { "MovieId", MovieId }, { "MovieTitle", MovieTitle } }, "Movie.Jsonl");
            }
        }           
    }
}

public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";
        this.Request("www.website.com", Parse);
    }
    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        foreach (var Divs in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (Divs.Attributes ["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var MovieId = Divs.GetAttribute("data-movie-id");
                var link = Divs.Css("a")[0];
                var MovieTitle = link.TextContentClean;
                Scrape(new ScrapedData() { { "MovieId", MovieId }, { "MovieTitle", MovieTitle } }, "Movie.Jsonl");
            }
        }           
    }
}

Public Class MovieScraper
	Inherits WebScraper

	Public Overrides Sub Init()
		License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey"
		Me.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All
		Me.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() & "\MovieSample\Output\"
		Me.Request("www.website.com", AddressOf Parse)
	End Sub
	Public Overrides Sub Parse(ByVal response As Response)
		For Each Divs In response.Css("#movie-featured > div")
			If Divs.Attributes ("class") <> "clearfix" Then
				Dim MovieId = Divs.GetAttribute("data-movie-id")
				Dim link = Divs.Css("a")(0)
				Dim MovieTitle = link.TextContentClean
				Scrape(New ScrapedData() From {
					{ "MovieId", MovieId },
					{ "MovieTitle", MovieTitle }
				},
				"Movie.Jsonl")
			End If
		Next Divs
	End Sub
End Class

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What’s new in this code?

The Working Directory property is used to set the main working directory for all scraped data and its related files.

Let's do more.

What if we need to build typed objects that will hold scraped data in formatted objects?

Let’s implement a movie class that will hold our formatted data:

public class Movie
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string URL { get; set; }

}

public class Movie
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string URL { get; set; }

}

Public Class Movie
	Public Property Id() As Integer
	Public Property Title() As String
	Public Property URL() As String

End Class

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Now we will update our code:

public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";
        this.Request("https://website.com/", Parse);
    }
    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        foreach (var Divs in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (Divs.Attributes ["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var movie = new Movie();
                movie.Id = Convert.ToInt32( Divs.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"));
                var link = Divs.Css("a")[0];
                movie.Title = link.TextContentClean;
                movie.URL = link.Attributes ["href"];
                Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl");
            }
        }
    }
}

public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";
        this.Request("https://website.com/", Parse);
    }
    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        foreach (var Divs in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (Divs.Attributes ["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var movie = new Movie();
                movie.Id = Convert.ToInt32( Divs.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"));
                var link = Divs.Css("a")[0];
                movie.Title = link.TextContentClean;
                movie.URL = link.Attributes ["href"];
                Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl");
            }
        }
    }
}

Public Class MovieScraper
	Inherits WebScraper

	Public Overrides Sub Init()
		License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey"
		Me.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All
		Me.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() & "\MovieSample\Output\"
		Me.Request("https://website.com/", AddressOf Parse)
	End Sub
	Public Overrides Sub Parse(ByVal response As Response)
		For Each Divs In response.Css("#movie-featured > div")
			If Divs.Attributes ("class") <> "clearfix" Then
				Dim movie As New Movie()
				movie.Id = Convert.ToInt32(Divs.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"))
				Dim link = Divs.Css("a")(0)
				movie.Title = link.TextContentClean
				movie.URL = link.Attributes ("href")
				Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl")
			End If
		Next Divs
	End Sub
End Class

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What’s new?

We implement Movie Class to hold our scraped data
We pass movie objects to the Scrape Method and it understands our format and saves in a defined format as we can see here:

Let’s start scraping a more detailed page.

The Movie Page looks like this:

<div class="mvi-content">
    <div class="thumb mvic-thumb"
         style="background-image: url(https://img.gocdn.online/2017/04/28/poster/5a08e94ba02118f22dc30f298c603210-guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-2.jpg);"></div>
    <div class="mvic-desc">
        <h3>Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2</h3>        
        <div class="desc">
            Set to the backdrop of Awesome Mixtape #2, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 continues the team's adventures as they travel throughout the cosmos to help Peter Quill learn more about his true parentage.
        </div>
        <div class="mvic-info">
            <div class="mvici-left">
                <p>
                    <strong>Genre: </strong>
                    <a href="https://Domain/genre/action/" title="Action">Action</a>,
                    <a href="https://Domain/genre/adventure/" title="Adventure">Adventure</a>,
                    <a href="https://Domain/genre/sci-fi/" title="Sci-Fi">Sci-Fi</a>
                </p>
                <p>
                    <strong>Actor: </strong>
                    <a target="_blank" href="https://Domain/actor/chris-pratt" title="Chris Pratt">Chris Pratt</a>,
                    <a target="_blank" href="https://Domain/actor/-zoe-saldana" title="Zoe Saldana">Zoe Saldana</a>,
                    <a target="_blank" href="https://Domain/actor/-dave-bautista-" title="Dave Bautista">Dave Bautista</a>
                </p>
                <p>
                    <strong>Director: </strong>
                    <a href="#" title="James Gunn">James Gunn</a>
                </p>
                <p>
                    <strong>Country: </strong>
                    <a href="https://Domain/country/us" title="United States">United States</a>
                </p>
            </div>
            <div class="mvici-right">
                <p><strong>Duration:</strong> 136 min</p>
                <p><strong>Quality:</strong> <span class="quality">CAM</span></p>
                <p><strong>Release:</strong> 2017</p>
                <p><strong>IMDb:</strong> 8.3</p>
            </div>
            <div class="clearfix"></div>
        </div>
        <div class="clearfix"></div>
    </div>
    <div class="clearfix"></div>
</div>

<div class="mvi-content">
    <div class="thumb mvic-thumb"
         style="background-image: url(https://img.gocdn.online/2017/04/28/poster/5a08e94ba02118f22dc30f298c603210-guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-2.jpg);"></div>
    <div class="mvic-desc">
        <h3>Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2</h3>        
        <div class="desc">
            Set to the backdrop of Awesome Mixtape #2, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 continues the team's adventures as they travel throughout the cosmos to help Peter Quill learn more about his true parentage.
        </div>
        <div class="mvic-info">
            <div class="mvici-left">
                <p>
                    <strong>Genre: </strong>
                    <a href="https://Domain/genre/action/" title="Action">Action</a>,
                    <a href="https://Domain/genre/adventure/" title="Adventure">Adventure</a>,
                    <a href="https://Domain/genre/sci-fi/" title="Sci-Fi">Sci-Fi</a>
                </p>
                <p>
                    <strong>Actor: </strong>
                    <a target="_blank" href="https://Domain/actor/chris-pratt" title="Chris Pratt">Chris Pratt</a>,
                    <a target="_blank" href="https://Domain/actor/-zoe-saldana" title="Zoe Saldana">Zoe Saldana</a>,
                    <a target="_blank" href="https://Domain/actor/-dave-bautista-" title="Dave Bautista">Dave Bautista</a>
                </p>
                <p>
                    <strong>Director: </strong>
                    <a href="#" title="James Gunn">James Gunn</a>
                </p>
                <p>
                    <strong>Country: </strong>
                    <a href="https://Domain/country/us" title="United States">United States</a>
                </p>
            </div>
            <div class="mvici-right">
                <p><strong>Duration:</strong> 136 min</p>
                <p><strong>Quality:</strong> <span class="quality">CAM</span></p>
                <p><strong>Release:</strong> 2017</p>
                <p><strong>IMDb:</strong> 8.3</p>
            </div>
            <div class="clearfix"></div>
        </div>
        <div class="clearfix"></div>
    </div>
    <div class="clearfix"></div>
</div>

HTML

We can extend our movie class with new properties (Description, Genre, Actor, Director, Country, Duration, IMDB Score) but we’ll use (Description, Genre, Actor) only for our sample.

public class Movie
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string URL { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
    public List<string> Genre { get; set; }
    public List<string> Actor { get; set; }

}

public class Movie
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string URL { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
    public List<string> Genre { get; set; }
    public List<string> Actor { get; set; }

}

Public Class Movie
	Public Property Id() As Integer
	Public Property Title() As String
	Public Property URL() As String
	Public Property Description() As String
	Public Property Genre() As List(Of String)
	Public Property Actor() As List(Of String)

End Class

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Now we’ll navigate to the Detailed page to scrape it.

IronWebScraper enables you to add more to the scrape function to scrape different types of page formats

As we can see here:

public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";
        this.Request("https://domain/", Parse);
    }
    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        foreach (var Divs in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (Divs.Attributes ["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var movie = new Movie();
                movie.Id = Convert.ToInt32( Divs.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"));
                var link = Divs.Css("a")[0];
                movie.Title = link.TextContentClean;
                movie.URL = link.Attributes ["href"];
                this.Request(movie.URL, ParseDetails, new MetaData() { { "movie", movie } });// to scrap Detailed Page
            }
        }           
    }
    public void ParseDetails(Response response)
    {
        var movie = response.MetaData.Get<Movie>("movie");
        var Div = response.Css("div.mvic-desc")[0];
        movie.Description = Div.Css("div.desc")[0].TextContentClean;
        foreach(var Genre in Div.Css("div > p > a"))
        {
            movie.Genre.Add(Genre.TextContentClean);
        }
        foreach (var Actor in Div.Css("div > p:nth-child(2) > a"))
        {
            movie.Actor.Add(Actor.TextContentClean);
        }
        Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl");
    }
}

public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";
        this.Request("https://domain/", Parse);
    }
    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        foreach (var Divs in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (Divs.Attributes ["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var movie = new Movie();
                movie.Id = Convert.ToInt32( Divs.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"));
                var link = Divs.Css("a")[0];
                movie.Title = link.TextContentClean;
                movie.URL = link.Attributes ["href"];
                this.Request(movie.URL, ParseDetails, new MetaData() { { "movie", movie } });// to scrap Detailed Page
            }
        }           
    }
    public void ParseDetails(Response response)
    {
        var movie = response.MetaData.Get<Movie>("movie");
        var Div = response.Css("div.mvic-desc")[0];
        movie.Description = Div.Css("div.desc")[0].TextContentClean;
        foreach(var Genre in Div.Css("div > p > a"))
        {
            movie.Genre.Add(Genre.TextContentClean);
        }
        foreach (var Actor in Div.Css("div > p:nth-child(2) > a"))
        {
            movie.Actor.Add(Actor.TextContentClean);
        }
        Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl");
    }
}

Public Class MovieScraper
	Inherits WebScraper

	Public Overrides Sub Init()
		License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey"
		Me.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All
		Me.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() & "\MovieSample\Output\"
		Me.Request("https://domain/", AddressOf Parse)
	End Sub
	Public Overrides Sub Parse(ByVal response As Response)
		For Each Divs In response.Css("#movie-featured > div")
			If Divs.Attributes ("class") <> "clearfix" Then
				Dim movie As New Movie()
				movie.Id = Convert.ToInt32(Divs.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"))
				Dim link = Divs.Css("a")(0)
				movie.Title = link.TextContentClean
				movie.URL = link.Attributes ("href")
				Me.Request(movie.URL, AddressOf ParseDetails, New MetaData() From {
					{ "movie", movie }
				}) ' to scrap Detailed Page
			End If
		Next Divs
	End Sub
	Public Sub ParseDetails(ByVal response As Response)
		Dim movie = response.MetaData.Get(Of Movie)("movie")
		Dim Div = response.Css("div.mvic-desc")(0)
		movie.Description = Div.Css("div.desc")(0).TextContentClean
		For Each Genre In Div.Css("div > p > a")
			movie.Genre.Add(Genre.TextContentClean)
		Next Genre
		For Each Actor In Div.Css("div > p:nth-child(2) > a")
			movie.Actor.Add(Actor.TextContentClean)
		Next Actor
		Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl")
	End Sub
End Class

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What’s new?

We can add scrape functions (ParseDetails) to scrape detailed pages
We moved the Scrape function that generates our file to the new function
We used the IronWebScraper feature (MetaData) to pass our movie object to the new scrape function
We scraped the page and saved our movie object data to a file

Darrius Serrant

Chat with engineering team now

Full Stack Software Engineer (WebOps)

Darrius Serrant holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Miami and works as a Full Stack WebOps Marketing Engineer at Iron Software. Drawn to coding from a young age, he saw computing as both mysterious and accessible, making it the perfect medium for creativity and problem-solving.

At Iron Software, Darrius enjoys creating new things and simplifying complex concepts to make them more understandable. As one of our resident developers, he has also volunteered to teach students, sharing his expertise with the next generation.

For Darrius, his work is fulfilling because it is valued and has a real impact.