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5 posts tagged with "go"

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· 12 min read
Oleg Kulyk

Parse HTML with Go

In the ever-evolving landscape of web development, the ability to efficiently parse and manipulate HTML documents is crucial for tasks such as web scraping and data extraction.

Go, a statically typed, compiled language known for its simplicity and performance, offers robust tools for these tasks. Among these tools, the net/html package stands out as a powerful standard library component that provides developers with the means to parse HTML content in a structured and efficient manner.

This package is particularly useful for web scraping, offering both tokenization and tree-based node parsing to handle a variety of HTML structures (The net/html Package).

Complementing the net/html package is the goquery library, which brings a jQuery-like syntax to Go, making it easier for developers familiar with jQuery to transition to Go for web scraping tasks.

Built on top of the net/html package, goquery leverages the CSS Selector library, Cascadia, to provide a more intuitive and higher-level interface for HTML document traversal and manipulation (GitHub - PuerkitoBio/goquery).

This guide will explore the features, benefits, and practical applications of both the net/html package and the goquery library, providing code examples and best practices to help you harness the full potential of Go for your web scraping projects.

· 16 min read
Oleg Kulyk

Scrape a Dynamic Website with Go

Web scraping has become an essential technique for data extraction, particularly with the rise of dynamic websites that deliver content through AJAX and JavaScript. Traditional methods of web scraping often fall short when dealing with these modern web architectures, necessitating more advanced approaches. Using the Go programming language for web scraping offers several advantages, including high performance, robust concurrency support, and a growing ecosystem of libraries specifically designed for this task.

Go, often referred to as Golang, is a statically typed, compiled language that excels in performance and efficiency. Its compilation to machine code results in faster execution times compared to interpreted languages like Python. This is particularly beneficial for large-scale web scraping projects where speed and resource utilization are critical. Additionally, Go's built-in support for concurrency through goroutines enables developers to scrape multiple web pages concurrently, making it highly scalable.

This report delves into the techniques and best practices for scraping dynamic websites using Go. It covers essential topics such as identifying and mimicking AJAX requests, utilizing headless browsers, and handling infinite scrolling. Furthermore, it provides insights into managing browser dependencies, optimizing performance, and adhering to ethical scraping practices. By the end of this report, you will have a comprehensive understanding of how to effectively scrape dynamic websites using Go, leveraging its unique features to build efficient and scalable web scraping solutions.

· 14 min read
Oleg Kulyk

How to download images with Go?

Downloading images programmatically is a vital task in many applications, ranging from web scrapers to automated backups. The Go programming language, with its powerful standard library and rich ecosystem of third-party packages, offers efficient tools for accomplishing this task. This guide explores how to use Go's net/http package for downloading images, handling different formats, and implementing best practices for error handling and concurrency. Additionally, it delves into enhanced image downloading with third-party packages, providing detailed explanations and step-by-step instructions for leveraging popular Go libraries like go-getter and grab to improve efficiency. These libraries, combined with image processing packages such as imaging and bild, enable developers to create robust and high-performance image downloading systems. By integrating AI-powered tools like Gigapixel AI and AVCLabs Photo Enhancer API, you can further enhance image quality and processing capabilities. This comprehensive guide covers everything from basic image downloading to advanced techniques, ensuring that your applications are both efficient and secure.

This article is a part of the series on image downloading with different programming languages. Check out the other articles in the series:

· 22 min read
Oleg Kulyk

Web Scraping with Go - How and What Libraries to Use

Web scraping has become an essential tool for data collection and analysis across various industries. The ability to programmatically extract information from websites allows businesses and researchers to gather large datasets efficiently and at scale. While Python has traditionally been the go-to language for web scraping due to its extensive libraries and ease of use, Go (also known as Golang) is rapidly gaining popularity for its performance advantages and built-in concurrency features.

Go is a statically typed, compiled language designed with simplicity and efficiency in mind. One of its standout features is its ability to handle concurrent operations through goroutines and channels, making it particularly well-suited for web scraping tasks that require fetching and processing data from multiple sources simultaneously. This concurrency support allows Go-based scrapers to achieve significant speed improvements over traditional, interpreted languages like Python.

Moreover, Go's robust standard library includes comprehensive packages for handling HTTP requests, parsing HTML and XML, and managing cookies and sessions, reducing the need for external dependencies. These built-in capabilities simplify the development process and enhance the maintainability of web scraping projects. Additionally, Go's strong memory management and garbage collection mechanisms ensure optimal resource utilization, making it an ideal choice for large-scale scraping tasks that involve extensive datasets.

This comprehensive guide explores why Go is an excellent choice for web scraping, introduces popular Go libraries for web scraping, and delves into advanced techniques and considerations to optimize your web scraping projects. Whether you are a seasoned developer or new to web scraping, this guide will provide valuable insights and practical code examples to help you harness the power of Go for efficient and scalable web scraping.