Scrape video information from YouTube
FollowIn this tutorial, we are going to show you how to scrape video information from YouTube.
Also, you can go to "Task Templates" on the main screen of the Octoparse scraping tool, and start with the ready-to-use YouTube Template directly to save your time. With this feature, there is no need to configure scraping tasks. For further details, you may check it out here: Task Templates
If you would like to know how to build the task from scratch, you may continue reading the following tutorial.
To follow through you might want to use the URL in this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com
Here are the main steps in this tutorial: [Download task file here]
- "Go To Web Page"- open the targeted web page
- Create a "Loop Item"- loop enter searching keywords
- Dealing with infinitive scrolling
- Create a "Loop Item" - loop extract each item
- Extract data - select data you need to scrape
- Start extraction - run the task and get data
1. "Go To Web page"- open the targeted web page
- Click "+ Task" to start a task using Advanced Mode
- Paste the URL into the "Website" box and click "Save URL" to move on
2. Create a "Loop Item" - loop enter searching keywords
We can customize our "Text list" to create a loop search action. Octoparse will automatically enter every keyword in the list into the search box, one line each time.
- Drag a "Loop Item" action into the workflow designer
- Go to loop mode and select "Text list"
- Click "a" to enter the keywords list with one keyword per line. Here we'll enter "Big Data" and "Machine Learning" as examples
- Click "OK" and "OK" when you finish entering. Then you can see your keywords in the "Loop Item"
- Click on the search box on the homepage in the built-in browser and select "Enter text” on the "Action Tips" panel
When you click on the input field in the built-in browser, Octoparse can detect that you select a search box, the "Enter text" action will automatically appear on the "Action Tips" panel.
- Input the first keyword "Big Data" on the "Action Tips"
- Click "OK", then the"Enter Text" action will be generated in the workflow
- Drag the "Enter Text" action into the"Loop Item. Click on the "Enter Text" action
- Go to "Loop Text" and select "Use the text in loop item to fill in the text box" and click "OK" to save
- Click the search button of the web page and select "Click button” on "Action Tips", you will notice the "Click Item" action is added into the workflow.
3. Dealing with infinitive scrolling
In this case, pagination is not an option for loading the searching results. We will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page continuously to load all the contents.
- Check "Scroll down to bottom of the page when finished loading" under "Advanced Options"
- Set "Scroll times" and "Interval" as you need
- Select "Scroll down to bottom of the page" as "Scroll way"
- Click the "OK" button to save the result
Tips!
|
4. Create a "Loop Item" - loop extract each item
When you create a list of items to scrape a website, sometimes the list may include several "Ads" items. To exclude the promotional video in this case, we can start building the "Loop Item" from the second row of the products on this page.
- Select the second block in the built-in browser
We need to make sure the whole block of the first video item is covered in blue when you curse over your mouse. Only in this way, we could see the whole item block is highlighted in green after clicking, covering all the information like video title, channel name, total reviews...etc.
- Click the third and fourth whole video item, until Octoparse identifies all other videos
Octoparse will automatically recognize the other blocks and highlight them in green. (If not, keep clicking on the next one till all of them are selected)
- Click " Extract text of the selected element " on the "Action Tips" panel
Tips!
|
5. Extract data - select data you need to scrape
- Click the data you need in the item block which is highlighted in red
- Click "Extract text of the selected element" and rename the "Field name" column if necessary
Rename the fields by selecting from the predefined list or inputting on your own.
- Click "OK" to save
6. Start extraction - run the task and get data
- Click "Save"
- Click "Start Extraction" on the upper left side
- Select "Local Extraction" to run the task on your computer, or select "Cloud Extraction" to run the task in the Cloud (for premium users only)
For a premium user, Cloud Extraction is highly recommended.
Here is the sample output.
Artículo en español: Extracción de información de video de Youtube
También puede leer artículos de web scraping en el website oficial
Author: Vanny
Editor: Fergus
Related articles:
Scrape Data Via Google Searching
Was this article helpful? Contact us any time if you need our help!