Web scraping often involves retrieving the full page source (the complete HTML of the web page) for data parsing using tools like BeautifulSoup. Python and Selenium offer a seamless approach to this, where the driver.page_source attribute becomes a pivotal asset in accessing the complete HTML content of any webpage. This capability is crucial for anyone involved in data extraction, providing a straightforward method to collect and manipulate web data effectively. However, for those embarking on more ambitious or complex scraping projects, turning to a specialized web scraping API can be a game-changer. Such tools are designed to simplify the extraction process, offering enhanced functionality like automated browser behavior, advanced data parsing, and efficient handling of large-scale scraping tasks, thereby empowering developers and analysts to focus on deriving insights and value from the web content they collect.
from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("https://httpbin.dev/html")
print(driver.page_source)
⚠ Be aware that this command might retrieve the page source before the page fully loads if it’s a dynamic JavaScript page. For more information, see how to wait for a page to load in Selenium.