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  • How to extract property prices from Rightmove.co.uk using Ruby?

    Posted by Nilam Hubertus on 12/21/2024 at 8:01 am

    Scraping property prices from Rightmove.co.uk using Ruby is a great way to collect valuable data for the real estate market, including property names, prices, and locations. Rightmove is one of the largest property websites in the UK, making it an excellent source for analyzing pricing trends and property availability. The first step in the process involves inspecting the HTML structure of the site to identify elements containing data such as property details. By sending HTTP requests to Rightmove pages and parsing the returned HTML, you can extract structured data for analysis. Pagination handling ensures that data is collected from all pages of listings, providing a comprehensive view of available properties.
    Using Ruby for scraping involves leveraging libraries like open-uri for HTTP requests and parsing the content. Automation can further enhance the process, allowing you to scrape data from multiple pages efficiently. Adding random delays between requests reduces the likelihood of being flagged by the site’s anti-scraping mechanisms. Once collected, storing the data in structured formats such as CSV or JSON makes it easier to analyze trends. Below is a Ruby script example for extracting property prices from Rightmove.

    require 'open-uri'
    require 'nokogiri'
    url = "https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale.html"
    html = URI.open(url).read
    doc = Nokogiri::HTML(html)
    doc.css('.property-card').each do |property|
      name = property.css('.property-title').text.strip rescue 'Name not available'
      price = property.css('.property-price').text.strip rescue 'Price not available'
      location = property.css('.property-location').text.strip rescue 'Location not available'
      puts "Property: #{name}, Price: #{price}, Location: #{location}"
    end
    

    This script collects property names, prices, and locations from Rightmove. Pagination handling ensures data is gathered across multiple pages. Adding random delays between requests ensures a smoother operation and reduces detection risks.

    Nilam Hubertus replied 1 day, 9 hours ago 1 Member · 1 Reply
  • 1 Reply
  • Nilam Hubertus

    Member
    12/21/2024 at 8:02 am

    Fingerprinting is hard to bypass. I’ve used Selenium with browser extensions to mimic real user behavior, but it’s time-consuming and not always foolproof.

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