IRE mini-bootcamp: Web scraping with Python (2023)

Materials for a Dec. 2023 mini bootcamp on web scraping with Python.

Setting up

1. If you haven't already, follow our guide to install Python on your computer.
2. Download and unzip the class materials onto your desktop. (Unzipping instructions: If you're on a PC, right-click on the file and choose "Extract all." Mac users, double-click the file.)
3. Open your computer's command-line interface -- cmd on a PC, Terminal on a Mac -- and cd into the folder that you just unzipped. If you unzipped it onto your desktop, the command to get there would be something like cd Desktop/python-mini-bootcamp-scraping-2023-main. Then try ls (or dir on a PC) to list the files and ensure that you're in the right place.
4. Create a virtual environment:

• PC: python -m venv env
• Mac: python3 -m venv env

5. Activate the virtual environment:

• PC: .\env\Scripts\activate
• Mac: source env/bin/activate

6. Verify that you're in the activated virtual environment -- you should see (env) prepended to the command prompt -- then install the Python dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt.
7. Install the Playwright browsers: playwright install