```{include} _templates/nav.html
```

# First Web Scraper

A step-by-step guide to writing a [web scraper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping) with the Python programming language.

## What you will learn

This tutorial will guide you through the process of writing a script that can extract the roster of inmates from [a local government website](https://report.boonecountymo.org/mrcjava/servlet/SH01_MP.I00290s) and prepare it for analysis.

Along the way you'll learn the fundamentals of [Python](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)), how to open URLs with [Requests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requests_(software)), how to parse HTML with [Beautiful Soup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beautiful_Soup_(HTML_parser)) and how to write data to a [comma-delimited file](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values).

## Who can take it

This course is free. The materials assume the reader has little to no experience. If you have a good attitude and can take a few code crashes in stride, you are qualified.

## Table of contents

```{toctree}
:maxdepth: 1

./prerequisites.md
./command-line.md
./python.md
./web-scraping.md
./about.md
```