Crawling Luxury Fashion Listings from Farfetch with Rust & SQLite: Analyzing Designer Brand Prices, Limited-Edition Collections, and Seller Ratings

Crawling Luxury Fashion Listings from Farfetch with Rust & SQLite: Analyzing Designer Brand Prices, Limited-Edition Collections, and Seller Ratings

The luxury fashion industry is a dynamic and ever-evolving market, with brands constantly vying for consumer attention through innovative designs and exclusive collections. Farfetch, a leading global platform for luxury fashion, offers a vast array of designer items from boutiques around the world. In this article, we will explore how to crawl luxury fashion listings from Farfetch using Rust and SQLite, focusing on analyzing designer brand prices, limited-edition collections, and seller ratings. This approach not only provides valuable insights into market trends but also helps consumers make informed purchasing decisions.

Understanding the Need for Web Crawling in Luxury Fashion

Web crawling is an essential tool for gathering data from online platforms, especially in industries like luxury fashion where trends change rapidly. By automating the data collection process, businesses and consumers can stay updated on the latest offerings and pricing strategies. Farfetch, with its extensive catalog of luxury items, serves as an ideal source for such data.

For consumers, understanding price trends and availability of limited-edition collections can significantly influence purchasing decisions. For businesses, analyzing seller ratings and brand performance can inform marketing strategies and inventory management. Thus, web crawling provides a comprehensive view of the luxury fashion landscape.

Setting Up the Environment with Rust and SQLite

Rust is a systems programming language known for its performance and safety, making it an excellent choice for web crawling tasks. Coupled with SQLite, a lightweight database engine, it allows for efficient data storage and retrieval. To begin, ensure that Rust and SQLite are installed on your system.

First, create a new Rust project using Cargo, Rust’s package manager:

cargo new farfetch_crawler
cd farfetch_crawler

Next, add the necessary dependencies to your `Cargo.toml` file:

[dependencies]
reqwest = { version = "0.11", features = ["json"] }
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }
scraper = "0.12"
rusqlite = "0.26"

These libraries will help in making HTTP requests, parsing HTML, and interacting with the SQLite database.

Implementing the Web Crawler in Rust

With the environment set up, we can now implement the web crawler. The goal is to extract data such as product names, prices, collection details, and seller ratings from Farfetch’s listings.

Start by creating a function to fetch the HTML content of a given URL:

use reqwest;
use scraper::{Html, Selector};

async fn fetch_html(url: &str) -> Result {
    let response = reqwest::get(url).await?;
    let body = response.text().await?;
    Ok(body)
}

Next, parse the HTML to extract relevant data:

fn parse_html(html: &str) {
    let document = Html::parse_document(html);
    let product_selector = Selector::parse(".product-card").unwrap();
    let name_selector = Selector::parse(".product-name").unwrap();
    let price_selector = Selector::parse(".product-price").unwrap();
    let rating_selector = Selector::parse(".seller-rating").unwrap();

    for product in document.select(&product_selector) {
        let name = product.select(&name_selector).next().unwrap().inner_html();
        let price = product.select(&price_selector).next().unwrap().inner_html();
        let rating = product.select(&rating_selector).next().unwrap().inner_html();

        println!("Name: {}, Price: {}, Rating: {}", name, price, rating);
    }
}

This function uses CSS selectors to extract product details from the HTML content.

Storing Data in SQLite

Once the data is extracted, it needs to be stored in an SQLite database for further analysis. First, create a database and a table to hold the product information:

use rusqlite::{params, Connection, Result};

fn create_database() -> Result {
    let conn = Connection::open("farfetch.db")?;
    conn.execute(
        "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS products (
            id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
            name TEXT NOT NULL,
            price TEXT NOT NULL,
            rating TEXT NOT NULL
        )",
        [],
    )?;
    Ok(())
}

Next, insert the extracted data into the database:

fn insert_product(conn: &Connection, name: &str, price: &str, rating: &str) -> Result {
    conn.execute(
        "INSERT INTO products (name, price, rating) VALUES (?1, ?2, ?3)",
        params![name, price, rating],
    )?;
    Ok(())
}

This setup allows for efficient storage and retrieval of product data, enabling detailed analysis of market trends.

Analyzing Designer Brand Prices and Collections

With the data stored in SQLite, we can perform various analyses to gain insights into the luxury fashion market. For instance, we can calculate average prices for different brands or identify trends in limited-edition collections.

To analyze brand prices, execute a query to calculate the average price for each brand:

fn analyze_brand_prices(conn: &Connection) -> Result {
    let mut stmt = conn.prepare("SELECT name, AVG(price) FROM products GROUP BY name")?;
    let brand_iter = stmt.query_map([], |row| {
        Ok((row.get::(0)?, row.get::(1)?))
    })?;

    for brand in brand_iter {
        let (name, avg_price) = brand?;
        println!("Brand: {}, Average Price: {}", name, avg_price);
    }
    Ok(())
}

This analysis helps identify which brands offer the most value or are priced at a premium.

Evaluating Seller Ratings

Seller ratings are crucial for assessing the reliability and quality of service provided by different sellers on Farfetch. By analyzing these ratings, consumers can make informed decisions about where to purchase their luxury items.

To evaluate seller ratings, execute a query to retrieve and analyze the ratings data:

fn analyze_seller_ratings(conn: &Connection) -> Result {
    let mut stmt = conn.prepare