In this blog, we will try to understand how to use Selenium and ChromeDriver to scrape Expedia airfare prices. Here, we will scrape Expedia data, one of the known and biggest Online Travel Agencies (OTA) in the world.
You will require Python 3.5 version to scrape flight prices using Python.
Selenium package: a well-known web browser automation package
ChromeDriver: enables users to use a browser and carry out tasks. pandas package
DateTime package
Scraping Policy
Before we get to start with the Python script, let's have a look at the scraping strategy:
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Enter The Routes And Dates You Wish To Scrape Into A CSV File. You May Add As Many Routes As You Like, But You Must Use The Names Of The Columns. Only Roundtrips Are Supported By The Scraper. Execute The Entire Code
Each Flight's Output Is A CSV File. The Date And Time Of The Scraping Will Be The Name Of The File. The Scraper Will Automatically Identify All Flights On The Same Path And Place Them In The Relevant Folder (The Name Of The Route). These would be the scraped routes as stated in the CSV file (the scraper automatically builds those folders):
Here, you can search various scraped information for Athens- Abu Dhabi routes: Each scrape sample for the Athens — Abu Dhabi route is represented by a single CSV file in the screenshot below. Its title is a representation of the scraper's execution date and time.
Data Fields
The flight scraper will help you scrape the following data fields from
Departure Time
Arrival Time
Duration Airline
Layovers
Airplane Type
Arrival Airport Name
Price
Departure Coach
The Exact Time Of Scraping
Stops
If the flight isn't direct, the scraper will provide you with further information for every connection.
Script
To begin, import the necessary libraries, specify the chrome driver, and choose the round-trip type, as normal.
In the subsequent steps, you'll use Selenium tools to construct a few functions to find specific characteristics on the webpage. The titles of the functions suggest what they do.
The following step is repeated for each row (flight) in the CSV routes file:
It's time to get data from the internet and add it to the Pandas DataFrame.
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Now, you can save the data in the required format such as CSV, JSON, etc.
For more details, regarding web scraping service of extracting flight price data using Python and Selenium, you can contact iWeb Scraping, today!
Request for a quote!!!
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