Scraping property info from Daft.ie

December 15, 2020 01:30
Updated

In this tutorial, we will show you how to scrape property information from Daft.ie.

To follow through, you may want to use this URL in the tutorial:

https://www.daft.ie/waterford-city/property-for-sale/waterford-city/?s[mxp]=850000

We will scrape data such as price, address, property overview and description from each property detail page with Octoparse.

This tutorial will also cover:

Locate elements correctly by modifying XPath in Octoparse

Tips!

It is recommended that you use the URL of the search result page directly whenever possible. Adding keywords/filters within Octoparse can complicate the task and leads to less efficient scraping.

Here are the main steps in this tutorial: [Download task file here]

1. Go To Web Page - open the target web page

Click "+ Task" to start a new task with Advanced Mode

Advanced Mode is a highly flexible and powerful web scraping mode. For people who want to scrape from websites with complex structures, like Daft.ie, we strongly recommend Advanced Mode to start your data extraction project.

Paste the URL into the "Website" box and click "Save URL" to move on

2. Create a pagination loop - scrape listings from all pages

Scroll down the page in the built-in browser, click the "Next" button
Click "Loop click next page" on the "Action Tips" panel
Click “Save”

3. Create a "Loop Item" - scrape all the items on each page

Now, you are on the second page. You should always start on the first page.

Click "Go to Web Page" in the workflow, and then select the "Pagination" loop

By this action, it can help Octoparse decide the order of execution. Then, you can start to make a "Loop Item".

Click the price of the 1st item in the list
Click "A" tag on the bottom of the "Action Tips" panel
Click "Select All" on the "Action Tips" panel
Click "Loop click each URL"
Set "Wait before execution" as "5" seconds (optional, depends on your local network condition)
Click "Save"

4. Extract data - select the data for extraction

Click on the data you need on the page
Select "Extract text of the selected element" on the "Action Tips" panel

Rename the fields by selecting from the predefined list or inputting on your own
Click "OK" to save

5. Customize the data field by modifying XPath - improve the accuracy of the extracted data (Optional)

When you run the task, you may find some fields missing data even though they are on the web page. In this case, you need to revise the XPath to locate the element correctly.

Select the "Property Description" field
Click the icon of "Customize data field" and select "Customize XPath"
Enter the modified XPath into the "Matching XPath" text box
- //section[@class='Section__container']/p[contains(@class,'PropertyDescription')]

Click "OK" to save

You may find that the "Loop Item" cannot include all the items you want, so you also need to revise the XPath for "Loop Item".

Select the "Loop Item"
Go to "Loop Mode" and select "Variable list"
Enter the modified XPath below into the text box for "Variable list"
- //a[@class='PropertyInformationCommonStyles__propertyPrice--link']
Click "OK" to save

Tips!

If you want to learn more about XPath and how to generate it, here are some related tutorials you might need:

Locate elements with XPath
Video: Octoparse: XPath 101

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 a data output sample for your reference.

Artículo en español: Scraping de la propiedad info de Daft.ie

También puede leer artículos de web scraping en el sitio web oficial

Writer: Vanny

Editor: Fergus

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