Advancements in Communication and Systems
Comparative Analysis of Dynamic Web Scraping Strategies: Evaluating Techniques for Enhanced Data Acquisition
Authors: Kaajal Sharma and Gautam M Borkar
Publishing Date: 12-02-2024
ISBN: 978-81-955020-7-3
Abstract
Web scraping efficiently extracts large data from websites, often in unstructured HTML, which needs conversion for diverse applications. Web scraping supports multiple languages (e.g., C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby). Python stands out due to its efficiency, offering numerous built-in and third-party libraries, superior speed, and tailored selection for precise data extraction. Dynamic web pages, characterized by their ability to update and modify content in real-time, are the integral part of the modern web ecosystem. The dynamism and diversity of these web pages pose a significant challenge when it comes to extracting valuable data from them. Traditional web scraping techniques that rely on static HTML parsing often fall short in the face of JavaScript-driven dynamic content. This technical paper focuses on the critical aspect of web scraping within the context of dynamic web pages. We explore key methods and libraries for handling dynamic content, including BeautifulSoup, LXML, and Selenium. We assess their performance and present statistical significance. The experimental results reveal a notable disparity in the performance of web scraping libraries. Specifically, when compared to the widely used Beautiful Soup and Lxml, Selenium library exhibits superior efficiency, utilizing 90% less data, and reducing processing time by 70%. These results highlight the significance of library selection in web data extraction research and offer useful information for practitioners looking for the best web scraping solutions.
Keywords
Web Scraping, dynamic web page, BeautifulSoup, LXML, XPath, HTML DOM, Selenium, performance evaluation, statistical validation.
Cite as
Kaajal Sharma and Gautam M Borkar, "Comparative Analysis of Dynamic Web Scraping Strategies: Evaluating Techniques for Enhanced Data Acquisition", In: Ashish Kumar Tripathi and Vivek Shrivastava (eds), Advancements in Communication and Systems, SCRS, India, 2024, pp. 241-252. https://doi.org/10.56155/978-81-955020-7-3-22