Simple Web Scraping Automation: Using Gemini and Python to Download Files

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Simple Web Scraping Automation: Using Gemini and Python to Download Files

Web scraping can be a powerful technique for data collection, and it’s surprisingly easy to implement with the right tools. Using Google’s Gemini AI to generate Python code can make this process even more accessible for beginners and experienced developers alike.

The process is straightforward – you can use Gemini to generate Python code that scrapes URLs and downloads files to a local folder. This automation can even be enhanced with Telegram integration if needed.

Step-by-Step Implementation

The example demonstrated involves scraping a webpage containing multiple URLs, specifically targeting files with the term ‘.csv’ in their names. Here’s how it works:

  1. Start by accessing Google’s Gemini AI
  2. Create a prompt asking Gemini to generate Python code for extracting URLs containing the word ‘download’ and the term ‘.csv’
  3. Request that the code also downloads these files to a folder named ‘data’
  4. Provide the target website URL
  5. Generate the code using Gemini

The resulting Python code uses popular libraries like BeautifulSoup for parsing HTML and extracting the relevant URLs. When executed in an environment like Visual Studio Code, the script automatically creates the specified data folder (if it doesn’t already exist) and downloads all matching CSV files.

Integration with Power BI

Once you’ve downloaded the files, you can take things a step further by analyzing the data in Power BI:

  1. Open Power BI and navigate to the ‘Get Data’ option
  2. Select ‘More Resources’ and choose to extract information from a folder
  3. Locate your ‘data’ directory containing the downloaded CSV files
  4. Transform the data as needed – adjust encoding and separators to properly read the files
  5. Use the csv.document function to read the content of all files

This seamless integration between web scraping and data analysis tools creates a powerful workflow for collecting and processing data from the web.

Benefits of This Approach

Using AI to generate the scraping code offers several advantages:

  • Reduces development time significantly
  • Minimizes coding errors
  • Makes web scraping accessible to those with limited programming experience
  • Creates a reusable template that can be modified for different websites

This technique demonstrates how modern AI tools can simplify technical tasks that previously required specialized knowledge, opening up data collection possibilities for a wider audience.

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