Scraping an Online Movie Website

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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”:

MovieScrapaerAddClass related to Scraping an Online Movie Website

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

123movies related to Scraping an Online Movie Website

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 a detailed page.

Let’s start to scrape this set of data:

public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        // Initialize scraper settings
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";

        // Request homepage content for scraping
        this.Request("www.website.com", Parse);
    }

    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        // Iterate over each movie div within the featured movie section
        foreach (var div in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (div.Attributes["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var movieId = Convert.ToInt32(div.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"));
                var link = div.Css("a")[0];
                var movieTitle = link.TextContentClean;

                // Scrape and store movie data as key-value pairs
                Scrape(new ScrapedData() 
                { 
                    { "MovieId", movieId },
                    { "MovieTitle", movieTitle }
                }, "Movie.Jsonl");
            }
        }           
    }
}
public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        // Initialize scraper settings
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";

        // Request homepage content for scraping
        this.Request("www.website.com", Parse);
    }

    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        // Iterate over each movie div within the featured movie section
        foreach (var div in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (div.Attributes["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var movieId = Convert.ToInt32(div.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"));
                var link = div.Css("a")[0];
                var movieTitle = link.TextContentClean;

                // Scrape and store movie data as key-value pairs
                Scrape(new ScrapedData() 
                { 
                    { "MovieId", movieId },
                    { "MovieTitle", movieTitle }
                }, "Movie.Jsonl");
            }
        }           
    }
}
Public Class MovieScraper
	Inherits WebScraper

	Public Overrides Sub Init()
		' Initialize scraper settings
		License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey"
		Me.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All
		Me.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() & "\MovieSample\Output\"

		' Request homepage content for scraping
		Me.Request("www.website.com", AddressOf Parse)
	End Sub

	Public Overrides Sub Parse(ByVal response As Response)
		' Iterate over each movie div within the featured movie section
		For Each div In response.Css("#movie-featured > div")
			If div.Attributes("class") <> "clearfix" Then
				Dim movieId = Convert.ToInt32(div.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"))
				Dim link = div.Css("a")(0)
				Dim movieTitle = link.TextContentClean

				' Scrape and store movie data as key-value pairs
				Scrape(New ScrapedData() From {
					{ "MovieId", movieId },
					{ "MovieTitle", movieTitle }
				},
				"Movie.Jsonl")
			End If
		Next div
	End Sub
End Class
$vbLabelText   $csharpLabel

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; }
}
IRON VB CONVERTER ERROR developers@ironsoftware.com
$vbLabelText   $csharpLabel

Now we will update our code:

public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        // Initialize scraper settings
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";

        // Request homepage content for scraping
        this.Request("https://website.com/", Parse);
    }

    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        // Iterate over each movie div within the featured movie section
        foreach (var div in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (div.Attributes["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var movie = new Movie
                {
                    Id = Convert.ToInt32(div.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"))
                };

                var link = div.Css("a")[0];
                movie.Title = link.TextContentClean;
                movie.URL = link.Attributes["href"];

                // Scrape and store movie object
                Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl");
            }
        }
    }
}
public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        // Initialize scraper settings
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";

        // Request homepage content for scraping
        this.Request("https://website.com/", Parse);
    }

    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        // Iterate over each movie div within the featured movie section
        foreach (var div in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (div.Attributes["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var movie = new Movie
                {
                    Id = Convert.ToInt32(div.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"))
                };

                var link = div.Css("a")[0];
                movie.Title = link.TextContentClean;
                movie.URL = link.Attributes["href"];

                // Scrape and store movie object
                Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl");
            }
        }
    }
}
Public Class MovieScraper
	Inherits WebScraper

	Public Overrides Sub Init()
		' Initialize scraper settings
		License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey"
		Me.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All
		Me.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() & "\MovieSample\Output\"

		' Request homepage content for scraping
		Me.Request("https://website.com/", AddressOf Parse)
	End Sub

	Public Overrides Sub Parse(ByVal response As Response)
		' Iterate over each movie div within the featured movie section
		For Each div In response.Css("#movie-featured > div")
			If div.Attributes("class") <> "clearfix" Then
				Dim movie As New Movie With {.Id = Convert.ToInt32(div.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"))}

				Dim link = div.Css("a")(0)
				movie.Title = link.TextContentClean
				movie.URL = link.Attributes("href")

				' Scrape and store movie object
				Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl")
			End If
		Next div
	End Sub
End Class
$vbLabelText   $csharpLabel

What’s new?

  1. We implemented a Movie class to hold our scraped data.
  2. We pass movie objects to the Scrape method which understands our format and saves it in a defined manner as shown in the image below:

    MovieResultMovieClass related to Scraping an Online Movie Website

Let’s start scraping a more detailed page.

The Movie Page looks like this:

MovieDetailsSample related to Scraping an Online Movie Website

<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.

using System.Collections.Generic;

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; }
}
using System.Collections.Generic;

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; }
}
Imports System.Collections.Generic

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
$vbLabelText   $csharpLabel

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()
    {
        // Initialize scraper settings
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";

        // Request homepage content for scraping
        this.Request("https://domain/", Parse);
    }

    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        // Iterate over each movie div within the featured movie section
        foreach (var div in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (div.Attributes["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var movie = new Movie
                {
                    Id = Convert.ToInt32(div.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"))
                };

                var link = div.Css("a")[0];
                movie.Title = link.TextContentClean;
                movie.URL = link.Attributes["href"];

                // Request detailed page
                this.Request(movie.URL, ParseDetails, new MetaData() { { "movie", movie } });
            }
        }           
    }

    public void ParseDetails(Response response)
    {
        // Retrieve movie object from metadata
        var movie = response.MetaData.Get<Movie>("movie");
        var div = response.Css("div.mvic-desc")[0];

        // Extract description
        movie.Description = div.Css("div.desc")[0].TextContentClean;

        // Extract genres
        movie.Genre = new List<string>(); // Initialize genre list
        foreach(var genre in div.Css("div > p > a"))
        {
            movie.Genre.Add(genre.TextContentClean);
        }

        // Extract actors
        movie.Actor = new List<string>(); // Initialize actor list
        foreach (var actor in div.Css("div > p:nth-child(2) > a"))
        {
            movie.Actor.Add(actor.TextContentClean);
        }

        // Scrape and store detailed movie data
        Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl");
    }
}
public class MovieScraper : WebScraper
{
    public override void Init()
    {
        // Initialize scraper settings
        License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey";
        this.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All;
        this.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() + @"\MovieSample\Output\";

        // Request homepage content for scraping
        this.Request("https://domain/", Parse);
    }

    public override void Parse(Response response)
    {
        // Iterate over each movie div within the featured movie section
        foreach (var div in response.Css("#movie-featured > div"))
        {
            if (div.Attributes["class"] != "clearfix")
            {
                var movie = new Movie
                {
                    Id = Convert.ToInt32(div.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"))
                };

                var link = div.Css("a")[0];
                movie.Title = link.TextContentClean;
                movie.URL = link.Attributes["href"];

                // Request detailed page
                this.Request(movie.URL, ParseDetails, new MetaData() { { "movie", movie } });
            }
        }           
    }

    public void ParseDetails(Response response)
    {
        // Retrieve movie object from metadata
        var movie = response.MetaData.Get<Movie>("movie");
        var div = response.Css("div.mvic-desc")[0];

        // Extract description
        movie.Description = div.Css("div.desc")[0].TextContentClean;

        // Extract genres
        movie.Genre = new List<string>(); // Initialize genre list
        foreach(var genre in div.Css("div > p > a"))
        {
            movie.Genre.Add(genre.TextContentClean);
        }

        // Extract actors
        movie.Actor = new List<string>(); // Initialize actor list
        foreach (var actor in div.Css("div > p:nth-child(2) > a"))
        {
            movie.Actor.Add(actor.TextContentClean);
        }

        // Scrape and store detailed movie data
        Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl");
    }
}
Public Class MovieScraper
	Inherits WebScraper

	Public Overrides Sub Init()
		' Initialize scraper settings
		License.LicenseKey = "LicenseKey"
		Me.LoggingLevel = WebScraper.LogLevel.All
		Me.WorkingDirectory = AppSetting.GetAppRoot() & "\MovieSample\Output\"

		' Request homepage content for scraping
		Me.Request("https://domain/", AddressOf Parse)
	End Sub

	Public Overrides Sub Parse(ByVal response As Response)
		' Iterate over each movie div within the featured movie section
		For Each div In response.Css("#movie-featured > div")
			If div.Attributes("class") <> "clearfix" Then
				Dim movie As New Movie With {.Id = Convert.ToInt32(div.GetAttribute("data-movie-id"))}

				Dim link = div.Css("a")(0)
				movie.Title = link.TextContentClean
				movie.URL = link.Attributes("href")

				' Request detailed page
				Me.Request(movie.URL, AddressOf ParseDetails, New MetaData() From {
					{ "movie", movie }
				})
			End If
		Next div
	End Sub

	Public Sub ParseDetails(ByVal response As Response)
		' Retrieve movie object from metadata
		Dim movie = response.MetaData.Get(Of Movie)("movie")
		Dim div = response.Css("div.mvic-desc")(0)

		' Extract description
		movie.Description = div.Css("div.desc")(0).TextContentClean

		' Extract genres
		movie.Genre = New List(Of String)() ' Initialize genre list
		For Each genre In div.Css("div > p > a")
			movie.Genre.Add(genre.TextContentClean)
		Next genre

		' Extract actors
		movie.Actor = New List(Of String)() ' Initialize actor list
		For Each actor In div.Css("div > p:nth-child(2) > a")
			movie.Actor.Add(actor.TextContentClean)
		Next actor

		' Scrape and store detailed movie data
		Scrape(movie, "Movie.Jsonl")
	End Sub
End Class
$vbLabelText   $csharpLabel

What’s new?

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

MovieResultMovieClass1 related to Scraping an Online Movie Website

Preguntas Frecuentes

¿Cómo puedo raspar datos de un sitio web de películas en línea?

Puedes usar IronWebScraper para raspar datos de un sitio web de películas en línea. Comienza creando una clase 'MovieScraper' que configure los ajustes del raspador y solicite el contenido de la página de inicio para su extracción.

¿Cuál es la función de la clase 'Movie' en la raspadura web?

En IronWebScraper, la clase 'Movie' se utiliza para estructurar y almacenar datos raspados como objetos, con propiedades tales como Id, Título, URL, Descripción, Género y Actor, asegurando un manejo de datos organizado.

¿Cómo puedes navegar y extraer información detallada de películas?

IronWebScraper te permite implementar una función 'ParseDetails' para acceder a páginas detalladas de películas y extraer información adicional, como descripciones, géneros y actores.

¿Qué papel juega la característica 'MetaData' en la raspadura web?

La característica 'MetaData' de IronWebScraper es crucial para transferir datos entre funciones de raspado, como pasar objetos de películas a la función 'ParseDetails' para un procesamiento adicional.

¿Cómo manejar diferentes formatos de página durante la raspadura?

Con IronWebScraper, puedes crear múltiples funciones de raspado para gestionar varios formatos de página y extraer eficientemente una amplia gama de datos.

¿Cómo puedes extraer IDs y títulos de películas usando IronWebScraper?

Puedes iterar sobre cada div de película dentro de la sección de películas destacadas en IronWebScraper para extraer IDs y títulos de películas accediendo a los atributos de datos y al contenido de texto.

¿Cuál es la importancia del registro en los ajustes del raspador?

La propiedad 'LoggingLevel' de IronWebScraper te permite establecer la verbosidad de las salidas de registro, ayudando a monitorear y solucionar problemas en el proceso de raspado de manera efectiva.

¿Cómo funciona un directorio de trabajo en un proyecto de raspadura web?

El directorio de trabajo en IronWebScraper está designado para almacenar todos los datos raspados y archivos relacionados, centralizando el proceso de gestión de datos.

¿Puede IronWebScraper usarse para automatizar tareas de extracción de datos?

Sí, IronWebScraper está diseñado para automatizar tareas de extracción de datos permitiendo a los usuarios crear clases y métodos para raspar y almacenar sistemáticamente datos de páginas web.

Darrius Serrant
Ingeniero de Software Full Stack (WebOps)

Darrius Serrant tiene una licenciatura en Ciencias de la Computación de la Universidad de Miami y trabaja como Ingeniero de Marketing WebOps Full Stack en Iron Software. Atraído por la programación desde joven, vio la computación como algo misterioso y accesible, convirtiéndolo en el ...

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