How to Extract Data from Any Government Website?

 

Different government websites provide valuable data you can utilize for research. As per the website, they could have important statistics as well as news articles associated with your subject.

As these are stats or articles are on the government side, you can rely on that information as it is trustworthy.

With a web data scraper like 3i Data Scraping, we can extract the newest press releases in a particular industry. We would scrape the headline, date, and description publisher.

Ensure to download as well as install 3i Data Scraping before getting started.

Let’s get started!

Scraping Data from a Government Website

For the given project, we will extract the UK government’s website for data associated with COVID-19

How to Extract a Government Website?

1. Download as well as install web scraper from 3i Data Scraping. Click on ‘new project’ option and submit a URL in the given text box. This website would now render within the 3i Data Scraping web scraper.

2. A ‘Select’ command would automatically get created. If not, just click on PLUS (+) symbol and pick the ‘Select’ command. Whereas using a ‘Select’ command, just click on initial headline given on a page. You need to notice the headlines you have selected would be in color green. 3i Data Scraping would now advocate which other fundamentals you wish to scrape in color yellow.

You might require to do that 2-3 times for teaching 3i Data Scraping about what to scrape. The rest headlines would now get highlighted in color green.

4. On left-hand sidebar, just rename the headline selection with something more suitable, we will name it as “headline”

5. Just click on PLUS (+) symbol next to the headline as well as select the command ‘Relative Select’.

6. Then click on first headline highlighted in color orange and click on the given description. An arrow would come showing the relationship you have made. You might require to repeat that step to completely train the Data scraper. Just rename the selection with “description”.

7. Just repeat the steps 5-6 for scraping data like date posted and publisher.

Adding Pagination

In case, we were about to begin a new project, we would scrape 20 headlines only. We will teach you about how to insert pagination to the web scraping project.

1. Just click on PLUS (+) symbol next to page selection as well as opt for “Select” command.

2. Use the ‘Select’ command and scroll down all the way to ‘Next Page’ link. Then click on that to choose it as well as rename selection to the next_button.

3. Then click on an icon given next to the next_button selection for expanding it.

4. Then delete these two commands with the subsequent selection.

5. After that, click on PLUS (+) symbol next to the next selection as well as add the Click command.

6. One pop-up will come asking if it is the “next page” link. Then, click on the option ‘Yes’ and enter number of times you’d love to repeat the procedure. Here, we would repeat that 3 times.

Run Your Scraping

Now it is the time to run the scraper. To do that, just click on green colored ‘Get Data’ button on the left-hand sidebar where you can test, schedule, and run your scraped jobs.

For bigger projects, it’s recommended to always test the job before you run it. Here, we will do it straight away.

When the running is completed, just download that as a JSON or Excel file.

Conclusion

And that’s it! Now, you understand how to extract a government website with no coding skills! Government websites provide ample data, which can be utilized for your personal research pieces.

In case, you have any problems during the project, just contact us through the live chat option on our website as well as we would be happy to help you with the project.

For more details, contact 3i Data Scraping or ask for a free quote!