Getting Data (APIs, Web Scraping)#
Data extraction is the process of retrieving data from sources like websites, databases, or APIs. A key step in this process is data cleaning, which involves removing duplicates, fixing errors, handling missing values, and standardizing formats to ensure the data is accurate and usable. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) allow for structured data to be accessed programmatically from external services, often in formats like JSON or XML. Web scraping is another common method, used to extract information from web pages by parsing their HTML content. While API data is typically well-organized, scraped data often requires more extensive cleaning due to inconsistent formatting or the presence of unwanted content. Together, data cleaning, API use, and web scraping help ensure that extracted data is reliable and ready for analysis.