Course

Introduction to Web Scraping in R

In this course, you’ll learn the fundamentals of collecting data by scraping the web using R and rvest. A data analyst or data scientist doesn’t always get the data they need in a CSV file or via an easily accessible database. Sometimes, you’ve got to go out and get the data you need. By the end of this course, you’ll know how to extract data via web scraping.

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Part of the Data Analyst (R), and APIs and Web Scraping with R paths.

4.8 (359 reviews)

1,454 learners enrolled in this course.

Intermediate friendly
3 hours
Self paced
4 lessons
1 project

“Getting a data science job would have been much harder without Dataquest. It’s a great product. I recommend it to anyone who asks me about how to get started.”

Adam Zabrodski

Data Science Manager @ Later

Introduction to Web Scraping in R

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Course overview

Although there are many datasets available in convenient formats, there’s also a lot of data that’s more difficult to access, like a table on a web page. To get this data, we’ll need to use web scraping. In R, we can do that with the rvest scraping package.
In this course, you’ll learn about web page structure, including the basics of HTML and CSS. You’ll also learn how to get the code from a page into your R workflow for further parsing and cleaning. Then, you’ll dig deeper into scraping, learning to use the CSS Selector to get precisely the data you want.
Best of all, you’ll learn by doing – you’ll practice and get feedback directly in the browser. At the end of the course, you’ll complete a guided project that asks you to use web scraping to analyze movie ratings.

Key skills

Scraping data from a web page using R and rvest
Parsing sites using the CSS Selector
Advanced web scraping techniques

Course outline

Introduction to Web Scraping in R [4 lessons]

Web Scraping in R 1h

Lesson Objectives

Detail the structure of webpages using HTML
Define the basics of web scraping

Intermediate Web Scraping in R 1h

Lesson Objectives

Employ a complex CSS Selector
Implement web scraper tools

Challenge: Working with Different Web Pages in R 1h

Lesson Objectives

Scrape different web pages
Identify different types of web pages

Guided Project: Analyzing Movie Ratings 1h

Lesson Objectives

Expand your portfolio with a guided web scraping project
Overcome common setbacks in data analysis

Projects in this course

Analyzing Movie Ratings

For this project, we’ll step into the role of data analysts to scrape IMDb movie data using R, analyzing ratings and votes to identify trends and build data visualization skills.

View Project

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Dataquest has helped thousands of people start new careers in data. If you put in the work and follow our path, you’ll master data skills and grow your career.

We believe so strongly in our paths that we offer a full satisfaction guarantee. If you complete a career path on Dataquest and aren’t satisfied with your outcome, we’ll give you a refund.

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Go from zero to job-ready

Learn exactly what you need to achieve your goal. Don’t waste time on unrelated lessons.

Build your project portfolio

Build confidence with our in-depth projects, and show off your data skills.

Challenge yourself with exercises

Work with real data from day one with interactive lessons and hands-on exercises.

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Aaron Melton

Business Analyst at Aditi Consulting

“Dataquest starts at the most basic level, so a beginner can understand the concepts. I tried learning to code before, using Codecademy and Coursera. I struggled because I had no background in coding, and I was spending a lot of time Googling. Dataquest helped me actually learn.”

Jessica Ko

Machine Learning Engineer at Twitter

“I liked the interactive environment on Dataquest. The material was clear and well organized. I spent more time practicing then watching videos and it made me want to keep learning.”

Victoria E. Guzik

Associate Data Scientist at Callisto Media

“I really love learning on Dataquest. I looked into a couple of other options and I found that they were much too handhold-y and fill in the blank relative to Dataquest’s method. The projects on Dataquest were key to getting my job. I doubled my income!”