Python web scraping multiple pages

Question

I am scraping all the words from website Merriam-Webster.

I want to scrape all pages starting from a-z and all pages within them and save them to a text file. The problem i'm having is i only get first result of the table instead of all. I know that this is a large amount of text (around 500k) but i'm doing it for educating myself.

CODE:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup as bs

URL = 'https://www.merriam-webster.com/browse/dictionary/a/'

page = 1
# for page in range(1, 75):

req = requests.get(URL + str(page))
soup = bs(req.text, 'html.parser')
containers = soup.find('div', attrs={'class', 'entries'})
table = containers.find_all('ul')

for entries in table:
    links = entries.find_all('a')
    name = links[0].text
    print(name)

Now what i want is to get all the entries from this table, but instead i only get the first entry.

I'm kinda stuck here so any help would be appreciated. Thanks

https://www.merriam-webster.com/browse/medical/a-z
https://www.merriam-webster.com/browse/legal/a-z
https://www.merriam-webster.com/browse/dictionary/a-z
https://www.merriam-webster.com/browse/thesaurus/a-z

Like the answer below, you need another for loop. One is for looping a-z, inner for loop for looping page numbers. To get the page number, find the a tag for last page then you will get the last page number: <a aria-label="Last" data-page="75" ... — Frank
– Frank, Commented Oct 21, 2020 at 19:33

Andrej Kesely · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-21 20:00:58Z

1

To get all entries, you can use this example:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup


url = 'https://www.merriam-webster.com/browse/dictionary/a/'
soup = BeautifulSoup(requests.get(url).content, 'html.parser')

for a in soup.select('.entries a'):
    print('{:<30} {}'.format(a.text, 'https://www.merriam-webster.com' + a['href']))

Prints:

(a) heaven on earth            https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28a%29%20heaven%20on%20earth
(a) method in/to one's madness https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28a%29%20method%20in%2Fto%20one%27s%20madness
(a) penny for your thoughts    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28a%29%20penny%20for%20your%20thoughts
(a) quarter after              https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28a%29%20quarter%20after
(a) quarter of                 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28a%29%20quarter%20of
(a) quarter past               https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28a%29%20quarter%20past
(a) quarter to                 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28a%29%20quarter%20to
(all) by one's lonesome        https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28all%29%20by%20one%27s%20lonesome
(all) choked up                https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28all%29%20choked%20up
(all) for the best             https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28all%29%20for%20the%20best
(all) in good time             https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/%28all%29%20in%20good%20time

...and so on.

To scrape multiple pages:

url = 'https://www.merriam-webster.com/browse/dictionary/a/{}'

for page in range(1, 76):
    soup = BeautifulSoup(requests.get(url.format(page)).content, 'html.parser')
    for a in soup.select('.entries a'):
        print('{:<30} {}'.format(a.text, 'https://www.merriam-webster.com' + a['href']))

EDIT: To get all pages from A to Z:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup


url = 'https://www.merriam-webster.com/browse/dictionary/{}/{}'

for char in range(ord('a'), ord('z')+1):
    page = 1
    while True:
        soup = BeautifulSoup(requests.get(url.format(chr(char), page)).content, 'html.parser')
        for a in soup.select('.entries a'):
            print('{:<30} {}'.format(a.text, 'https://www.merriam-webster.com' + a['href']))

        last_page = soup.select_one('[aria-label="Last"]')['data-page']
        if last_page == '':
            break

        page += 1

EDIT 2: To save to file:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup


url = 'https://www.merriam-webster.com/browse/dictionary/{}/{}'


with open('data.txt', 'w') as f_out:
    for char in range(ord('a'), ord('z')+1):
        page = 1
        while True:
            soup = BeautifulSoup(requests.get(url.format(chr(char), page)).content, 'html.parser')
            for a in soup.select('.entries a'):
                print('{:<30} {}'.format(a.text, 'https://www.merriam-webster.com' + a['href']))

                print('{}\t{}'.format(a.text, 'https://www.merriam-webster.com' + a['href']), file=f_out)

            last_page = soup.select_one('[aria-label="Last"]')['data-page']
            if last_page == '':
                break

            page += 1

edited Oct 21, 2020 at 20:00

answered Oct 21, 2020 at 19:34

Andrej Kesely

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5 Comments

Mujtaba Over a year ago

This is only for page 'a' but i want this for all pages 'a-z'. Kindly Can u tell me that as well

Mujtaba Over a year ago

Thanks, but as a beginner i don't understand some of the commands so if you can add some explanation that would help others as well. And i also want to save this to a text file how do it do that.

Andrej Kesely Over a year ago

@Mujtaba See my Edit 2, how to save to file.

Mujtaba Over a year ago

Thanks sir, it's really helpful. Finally i'm adding other categories as well but i'm getting some errors. Can u please add that as well in the code. They are as follows: thesaurus, medical, legal.

Mujtaba Over a year ago

Please look above this when u have time.

JAV · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-21 19:28:50Z

1

I think you need another loop:

for entries in table:
    links = entries.find_all('a')
    for name in links:
        print(name.text)

answered Oct 21, 2020 at 19:28

JAV

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