Scrapy for Beginners - A Complete How To Example Web Scraping Project

DISCORD (NEW): / discord
Scrapy for Beginners! This python tutorial is aimed at people new to Scrapy. We cover crawling with a basic spider an create a complete tutorial project, including exporting to a JSON file. We scrape products from a online shop and get names and prices. Learn how to use the Scrapy shell to parse the data, and get text and "href" attributes from the HTML, as well as scraping multiple pages. This is a full how to from start to finish for your first Scrapy spider project, all in Python 3.
code: github.com/jhnwr/whiskyspider
Proxies: proxyscrape.com/?ref=jhnwr
Patreon: / johnwatsonrooney (NEW)
The Scraper API I use: www.scrapingbee.com/?fpr=jhnwr
Donate: www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_...
Hosting: Digital Ocean (Affiliate Link) - m.do.co/c/c7c90f161ff6
Gear Used: jhnwr.com/gear/
DISCLAIMER This contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission.

[@grahamfeeley9944]

I struggle to understand all commands in Python, however John has opened the door to me with his videos on scraping, Thank you John

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

I’m glad I can help Graham

[@mickelodiansurname9578]

As a coder since the 80's I can pretty much guarantee you will never learn all the functions, libraries, plugins or imports or methodologies in a programming language. There are just too many and you use most so infrequently. Maybe old languages like basic and pascal might have a low ceiling on functions etc..
But that is what having another tab open on google is for, cos you will never be the first to face a given problem.

[@obeliskphaeton]

​@@JohnWatsonRooney Hi John. Im trying to go thru this tutorial. But at around 15:30 mark, my code is exporting a blank file. I can't figure out why?
Also the items scraped count (100) in your case < ---- this line is NOT available in my terminal output
I am using the exact same code as you.

[@SyedShah-os7ck]

This is first time I came across John's channel. What an amazing beginners tutorial on Scrapy..., it is clear, straightforward with an actual example project!! What I really like is John's non-salesman's method of providing all the relevant information and professionally nav through the content.
Thank you John. cheers mate and keep making quality content.

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you very much I’m glad I have helped you

[@apk1970]

Best beginners scrapy tutorial to date.
Testing prior to building the spider.

[@navturn]

This video is quite "old" but still perfectly relevant. I discovered you channel recently and love it. Thank you.

[@eddiethinhvuong1607]

yours isn't the first scrapy video I watched, but definitely the best one out there. Thank you very much

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thanks!

[@gianfrancodagostino3938]

Man great tutorial. Pretty straightforward. The additional tips like the -o and -O are just gold. Thank you.

[@GlennCarnes]

Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. I was reading a book on Web-Scraping but was totally lost as they short-circuited some of the vital steps in the process. This was a clear as day, and now I feel confident in pursuing the next level.

[@mitchdask]

That's exactly what i was searching for!A well explained example of scrapy - simply amazing!You made me understand how it works!Many thanks!!!!!!!

[@rezz_533]

Same. Its very educational. Amazing video.

[@abhishek894]

Fantastic stuff. Your way of going through each step is awesome. Thank you for sharing this.

[@vitalchance5768]

Again, excellent video! There are so many idiotic tutorials online where the authors seemingly do not understand neither terminology nor the process flow of what they are teaching. In this great example even the recursive scraping was made easy and elegant and John actually pointed out that this is recursive scraping which, in its nutshell, is a foundation of any real life spider. Thank you!

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you very kind!

[@ferilukmansyah3037]

I just heard about scrapy framework, this tutorial is easy to understand, I am very grateful

[@omidasadi2264]

23 minutes teaching, without a second interrupt, just can say wonderful my friend..!

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you very kind!

[@10willian03]

Man, what an amazing tutorial, honestly
I watched some other videos about Scrapy but none of them could make their lessons clear
I was having no progress at all, until I came across your video
Thanks a lot and congratulations for your work

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you! I’m glad I was able to help!

[@roataion7042]

I love you John! Switching to Scrapy for the next part of my project.

[@dystopian_1]

You are the only Scrapy specialist that I follow in YT... hoping that you will keep sharing knowledge.

[@littlehonda272]

I only finish the beginner guide for python and your tutorial is amazingly easy to understand.
looking forward to more demonstration tutorial! Many thanks!

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you!

[@tubelessHuma]

Brilliant John. Happy Scrapy Journey 👏💖

[@Niams993]

Wow, best tutorial I've seen so far about the basics of Scrapy, thanks a lot John !

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Glad you liked it!

[@k.k6349]

holy lol, this was exactly what I was looking for. Actually I was struggling with some paid online course using scrapy and I looked up your playlist but couldn't find any scraping via scrapy and now here it is.

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Glad I can help!!

[@hails1244]

THIS was tremendously helpful. and I actually got my .json file output with all my results. thanks for everything.

[@asmuchican490]

One of the best channel to learn web crawling. Good audio and video quality and easy to understand.

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you!

[@nsfmatt]

John, the content you produce is fantastic. I have learned a great deal from your videos. Thanks to this video in particular, I can now collect Major League Baseball scores quickly, easily, and accurately using a Python script that takes only a few seconds. Thank you!

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Hey! That’s fantastic thanks!

[@waleedshreef6787]

Dear John
Thanks for all your help from others, and I wait for more from you. We are following you
Regards Waleed

[@10tksom28]

Thank you John! Your explanation is very comprehensive. Great tutorial!

[@jakepyrett1715]

Thanks so much for the content. Works perfectly and saved me hours of frustration! Thanks for adding the bonus pagination material.

[@ervankurniawan41]

You're channel is too sicks!
Thanks for sharing the tutorial!
Really helpful for me to get started learn scrapy from basics! 🌟

[@joekakone]

Very clear ! Thank you a lot 😊. This is exactly what I was looking for ✅

[@nadyamoscow2461]

Your lessons are brilliant, thanks for sharing

[@adc9640]

Excellent tutorial video!! Had issue setting up virtual environment earlier. This video cleared everything up for me. Very clear steps on Scrapy as well!

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you I’m glad it could help you out!

[@BYOong]

Thanks John, these are very practical tutorials for scrapy

[@djuzla89]

This was nice, exactly what I was looking for

[@juanotavalo]

Thank you, your tutorial was so simple to understand the basic functionality of scrapy.

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Glad you liked it

[@DagStylez]

This is a great tutorial on Scrapy. Very clear walk-through. Thank you!

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you

[@victormaia4192]

I had already tried to learn scrapy and failed many times to follow the results from other videos, but I finally got similar resultsfollowing your steps, I felt I learned a lot, even with my mistakes, just had to use custom_settings and it runned perfectly.

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

That’s great!

[@ahmadhaidar719]

hi,what settings did you apply,because i have a problem runing the scrape and crawling.

[@jonathanfriz4410]

As always, gold content!

[@CurrentElectrical]

A nice and clean explanation, thank you from Canada.

[@137Official]

Your tutorials are so concise, cheers to the great content, so many useful details.

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you!

[@RichPortah]

All your videos are the best 👍... I follow along with every one

[@salimbo4577]

Thank you so much. Very informative with just the essential stuff to use

[@JohnMusicbr]

What an excellent didactic. Thanks, John.

[@abramboshara5911]

Excellent as usual , thank you 🙏

[@imherovirat]

Hey Buddy, I've been following your videos since last month. You are doing great. I really enjoy watching your videos and coding along with you. I was just thinking of learning scrapy boom and now the video is here. I haven't watched this but I'm saving for later it and leaving with a like and this comment. Just keep uploading few more videos and projects with scrapy. Thanks, Love from Nepal

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you so much 😊 very kind

[@scraps7624]

Exactly what I was looking for, great video

[@oyvindlindvi]

Very good video John! Thank you very much

[@AmodeusR]

Awesome video, it helped me a lot to understand Scrapy and how to do somethings I wanted with a personal project.

[@TauwinKul]

Thank you for the world class content.

[@spicemasterii6775]

Amazing video! Very clearly explained. Well done and thank you!

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thanks!

[@AnjaliSingh-gi7ox]

This video on Scrapy is incredibly informative and helpful. It provided a clear understanding of the framework in a concise manner. Highly recommended!

[@ahmd09]

The most Underrated Pythonista Ever

[@shantanuraj7086]

This is one of the best videos I have seen so far. Thanks

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you!

[@omari6108]

This is fantastic, and very helpful. Thanks a lot man

[@keckelt]

Great tutorial and example products 🙂

[@beware5159]

Thank you for the tutorial man!

[@vampirekabir]

you are amazing man
looking forward for more

[@lifeisstr4nge]

Nice no-nonsense tutorial. Thanks ;)

[@BeSharpInCSharp]

what a wonderful tutorial. thanks from the heart

[@muhammaddenaadryan2411]

Easy to follow, thank you !

[@hannsflip]

Very good tutorial, self explanatory!!!!

[@IntricateMoon]

Thank you for this amazing tutorial John!!! 🤩

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Glad you liked it!

[@vitalchance5768]

Excellent video, thank you!

[@antaljani]

Hi John, I just made it. However there are even more products on the page, the spider was worked properly. Thanks a lot for this tutorial, you helped a lot.

[@KookyCloud]

Johnny, thanks for this, you rock!!!

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thanks!

[@user-kc6wz7xr8e]

that's awesome man! thanks!

[@usmanafridi9668]

Thank you for such an awesome video!!

[@UsamaAli-kr2cw]

Fantastic Stuffs you make Scrapy look easy when it is not.

[@KhalilYasser]

Awesome my bro. Thanks a lot for these treasures.

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you

[@7Trident3]

Just getting started with scraping, using the "web scraper" plugin. It really is satisfying seeing the data in a usable way. Thank you for the basic tutorial, love your channel. Thanks to you, Scrapy will be another tool in the box, I might even try your BS tutorial?! You should do a video on "How it's done". Couldn't subscribe fast enough!

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Hey thank you! Very kind

[@simplepycodes]

Thanks a lot, nice and clean explanation.

[@amineboutaghou4714]

Very clever initiative of making scrappy videos as there are only a few ou there in TH-cam with much lower quality than yours. Good continuation !

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you !

[@raphaelamponsah4016]

Your tuts are succinct!😉

[@maggiekay1]

thank you for your course, it helps a lot！

[@snplzz]

really love your content , im a newbie here your vid is my inspiration. thank you for good content like this .

[@Daalen03]

New sub, really helpful content!

[@alemanpp1234]

Thanks, the best scrapy video by far!!
PD: in your "if" statement you could just do:
if nextpage:
print("blablabla")
Both work but I think this look cleaner.

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thanks a lot!

[@deifio]

Great tutorial! Covers all the basics and I think I can start building my own program now. Thank you!

[@rezz_533]

The python code is just beautiful

[@ninja_modz]

Thank you so much the tutorial is very clear

[@AL-sk9iv]

Just have to say, some legend.🙌

[@7cabeca7]

amazing man!! thank you so much

[@talhariaz4577]

I would love to call you my Teacher 🥰. So, Sir thank you so much. I love your work.

[@davebrunton2310]

Excellent tutorial.

[@Henry_Nunez]

John Watson Rooney 👍🔔 Gracias amigo.

[@IanDangerfield]

dude this was awesome! Thank you

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thanks glad you enjoyed it!

[@Yuri-wk8rk]

Thank you, nice tutorial

[@OctagonalGolbat]

Thanks, this was really useful

[@numpyasnum1768]

Thanks for this, it really helped, wow

[@nicolas141299]

Thnk you :) very clear example

[@Diamond_Hanz]

OMG.. TY. NYC in the house

[@Actanonverba01]

Good Work, John! I found them really useful.
If I may suggest, I feel that numbering the videos is helpful. While I feel that your video naming is done well, it is not always clear to new students of the subject. Numbering gives me an idea of the flow of logic, tasks, and their difficulty that could/should be learned in what order. When someone like yourself has a good number of quality videos it is hard to know where to start.
I know that free advice is worth every penny, but just food for thought. ;)
Kudos!

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thanks. Yes I really need to redo my playlists so I have a “start here” style one, I think that would be very useful

[@patrick4829]

Awesome!! Thank you!

[@rasheed697]

Excellent video ...............................Thank You !!!

[@sergi0YT]

Whiksy Whisky! 🥃

[@zeki7540]

That's really nice !

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Thank you!

[@dorukcanbasbuyuk7799]

you are amazing! Thanks a lot!!

[@kamaleshpramanik7645]

Thank you very much Sir ...

[@manwhogrin7361]

This video helps me a lot, anyway thank you for the tutorial.

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Glad it helped

[@cecgHS]

Thanks for the content

[@emandiab9524]

Thanks a lot for this tutorial

[@JohnWatsonRooney]

Glad it was helpful!

[@user-hy2pj4ne2o]

Thank you a lot .......it is really amazing 💐💐

[@d34thkn1ghtger]

Hi John, that was super helpful, thanks a lot! What are some other accessible videos/ resources you'd recommend to explore further for beginners?