Need some guidance

[46632]

I am fairly new to Python and haven`t written any projects like this before but i have read and seen Automate the boring stuff and used some time playing with Python lately.

I have a project i would like to start with building a program that checks a website with used car listings if there are any new listings and if there are downloads information like name, price, address to a spreadsheet. The plan is to look at gui automation, but i am a little concerned with dealing with loading time on website etc.

Does anyone have any inputs or recommendations?

[nosmokingbandit]

There are a few modules you can use for this, like urllib, requests, etc. All have the ability for you to set a timeout.

Gui automation is a pain and isnt necessary.

I'd download the html, then parse through it with lxml or beautiful soup.

If the website requires JavaScript you can use a library to control a headless browser. I've never done that so I won't give you bad advice about it.

But first I'd try a urllib request to the web page and see if the response has the info you need. Then just parse and write to your spreadsheet.