Eric
Data Crawling & Scraping | Python . Scrapy . NET . Selenium
Spain | Europe/Madrid (USD)
Full-time : 30+ hrs/week
ABOUT ME
I have more than 7 years of experience as a developer coding automated web crawling and scraping solutions and data extractions. Since 2012 I have developed hundreds of different scrapers and crawlers for a wide range of purposes from different types of business directories, ecommerce sites, review sites etc. I have scraped data from websites that require parsing Javascript/Ajax, using proxies, solving captcha's, infinite loops, popups...
What kind of jobs can I do for you? -------------------------------------------------------------------
- scrape a directory (e.g.: Yellow pages, White Pages)
- scrape an e-commerce website (e.g.: Amazon)
- scrape search engines (e.g.: Google Search, Bing Search, Yahoo Search)
- scrape any other kind of website.
- extract emails (porfolio)
- create a custom web scraping tool to use on demand.
Do I scrap the data or do you?-------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's your choice:
I can give you the script or the installer if you want to run it yourself. It's usually the best option if you want to scrape data for a very long time or with a certain frecuency.
or
I can extract the data for you using the technologies that best fit. That is the best option is you want something fast and just once.
How does the scraper work? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It gets all the urls (commercial sites) or can gather data by region, county or city (directories). In other case, we adapt.
What output formats do I offer? -----------------------------------------------------------------------
- .xls, .xlsx, .txt, .csv, .json, .xml or MS-Access (.mdb, .accdb), MySQL (sql), SQLServer (sql)
What technologies do I use? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scripts .......................................................................
- Python + Beautiful Soup (request, urllib, urllib2, xpath, css selectors)
- Scrapy
I give you the script, you run it.
Source code ............................................................
- Visual basic .net + Winforms (webrequest, httpwebrequest, webclient, httpclient, web browser (internet explorer), webkit browser (google chrome), gecko browser (mozilla firefox))
I give you the installer, you install the software and you run it.
Automation tool ...................................................
- Selenium
Automations tools such as Selenium are meant to resolve more complex scenarios where human behaviour must be mimicked: For example clicking a button, opening a popup, dealing with an infinite loop. It must be used with websites where the html is loaded dynamically using technologies such as Javascript and Ajax (RIA - Rich Internet Applications)
Selenium can be used with Visual Basic .NET + Winforms and with Python and Scrapy too (Scrapy being Python based).
What about databases? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are not usually obliged to use databases for scraping purposes but in some cases, the website structure needs us to reverse-engineer the underlying database and create our own with several tables and several one-to-many relationships.
In that case, the data is distributed in several tables and we can get, not one but several datasets simply making queries.
What about data cleansing? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's crucial. I always deliver clean data after applying cleansing functions that deal with html special characters, change the case, concatenate...
SKILLS
RATINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON TOOGIT
Excellent results! I can really recommend Eric.
5Great job, he even recommended how to improve the project...very professional. very recommended
5No feedback given
5No feedback given
4Eric is great doing his work If you want your jobs done at time and with quality, hire him
5Awesome work from Eric
5Great communication. Hit a snag and was able to deal with it no issue.
5No feedback given
4Eirc is a very good freelancer Good quality code and results I will be working with him on future jobs for sure If you want your job done with quality and in time, you should consider Eric
5No feedback given
5Was quite helpful. Communicates well.
5Thanks Eric!
5good experience.
5special work Eric.
5Great work!
5Wonderful work Eric!
5Eric was of great assistance with out web crawler tool needs. He was able to build us a google maps business data crawler that worked very efficiently. It came in the form of an installable windows program. The program extracted data and saved screenshots to a folder and other data to an access datasheet. He was prompt and communicated very well. When we had some technical issues he was able to efficiently resolve the issue on my computer by accessing my desktop remotely using teamviewer. I would recommend Eric for web tools and other web scraping needs. I plan to consult with him again in the future. Thank you!
5Eric is very accurate and helpful!
5great work!
5Thanks Eric!
5Amazing results! Thanks.
5great work.
5Eric is very precise and accurate!
5Fantastic work, Thanks Eric!
5Great work, thanks!
5Working with Eric was very productive. I only needed one kickoff conversation and one checkpoint. He completely delivered what i asked him in the agreed timeline. I strongly recommend him for others who are considering hiring him. I would personally consider him for a potential next assignment. Merci Eric pour ton efficace travail!
5Eric is a creative and highly talented solution provider. His thinking is outside the box, and it was a pleasure working with him again. Looking forward to many more successful projects together.
5Working with Eric has been amazing. He is an unstoppable force making sure he provided 100% satisfaction regardless of some big hurdles. Other freelancers would have quit early but Eric kept on until he provided what turned out to me more complicated than originally anticipated - even when I didn't push for it. Would 100% work with Eric again!
5No feedback given
4Very reliable work. Eric was always available to discuss things and make any changes! resulting in a very good extraction of a very specific set of elements from rather troublesome sites. Very recommended!
4No feedback given
5Eric was a pure joy to work with. He went above and beyond the expectations. Freelancer's Response Music to my ears! This is the kind of music I like to listen and I do whatever it takes to hear it. Do I have all those qualities a good freelancer needs to have on Upwork to be successfull? I work on it every single day, week, month and year: Basically, I have identified and written a list of qualities and I go from "wanted quality" to "acquired quality". My policy is simple: "client first". I think this is the best long term client policy. Clients comes back and I have more and more ongoing jobs from satisfied clients. When you're good at what you do, why would client go somewhere else when they know that you're a great freelancer with a fair price, fast, communicative....?
5Great work Eric!
5Always very quick and reliable.
5Eric is perfect!
5Eric stuck with the project until completion. Very knowledgeable & tech savvy. Highly recommend.
5perfect!
5Great work!
5highly recommended
5Eric was again fantastic! Very flexible and hard working as well as getting things done in a tight schedule and giving some useful advice about analysing the data.
5Eric has been very flexible, communicative and thorough in his work. Will definitely work with him again.
5No feedback given
5No feedback given
5Excellent work!!
5Great Work Eric!
5Eric handled the project quickly and he went beyond what was called for by offering suggestions that were helpful. I will rehire Eric the next time a have a project that calls for data manipulation
5Eric is very quick with good results!!! Thanks!!!
5No feedback given
5Great results!
5absolutely terrific!
5Thanks!!!
5Great and hard worker!
5Thanks for your great work Eric!
5That was really quick!
5Eric, is very reliable and quick!
5very hard worker.
5very quick done. Good quality!
5Great worker to work with.
5No feedback given
5REAL QUICK!!!
5Eric understood my Data Scraping needs very quickly and was able to offer and deliver a far superior alternative to my initial project brief that provided an all-round better product. His enhancements not only delivered more data than my original project brief, by FULLY AUTOMATING the process, greatly reduced data handling that would have been required if Eric had not been able to offer these enhancements. His instruction video accompanying the product was also invaluable. Using a great freelancer like Eric is exactly the reason I wanted to use Upwork, a unique set of skills that was not available within the company I work for and his suggestions to further enhance the product will no doubt be part of my next project. I would highly recommend Eric for any project that required this level of data scraping!! Thanks Eric!
5Working with Eric is like a breeze, easy, fast, convenient, pro-active. Higly appreciated force.
5Eric helped us in a very pro-active way. The job was completed succesful and in time. I highly recommend hiring Eric!
5No feedback given
5Eric is a excellent partner to work with.
5Eric worked very efficiently and produced excellent results. He is a master at data scraping and is great to work with. I'd highly recommend him. Freelancer's Response Thank you, Rahasing. Remember that the possibility of improving a little bit that software exists and give you the ability to freedom and gather the data by yourself as much as you want, whenever you want. There is not a big difference between simple and really great. It depends on your needs: if it's a one time thing, the job's done. If it's not, you should seriously consider that very little investment.
5Excellent results and fast work
5Eric did an incredible job with a difficult task. He pushed through each challenge as it came, and kept me updated (the proper amount) as he worked. The output is exactly what I envisioned, and I will certainly come back to Eric when I need something in the future. Great work!
5Impressive results
5High quality, quick service.
5Eric has been a pleasure to work with. You will not find many freelancers like him here - professional, honest, and always ready to give you the right solution, even if it means he will make less money on the project. He's a talented individual who I plan on keeping for as long as I'm in business. Usually scraping professionals want to give you a list and be done with the project, but Eric goes the extra mile and develops highly dynamic software, which you can purchase from him. This means you can run the software at any point in the future to extract the data on your own, rather than going back to the freelancer to retrieve an updated list. Fantastic experience working with Eric!
5Very well done! Thank you.
5Eric was extremely responsive, knowledgeable, and a pleasure to speak with. He was very helpful for my project and was willing to help in anyway.
5Very useful results.
5no regrets!
5Thanks again Eric!
5Thanks again Eric.
5perfect results! quick response!
5Just perfect!!!
5Really quick and usefull! Thanks Eric!!!
5Great list of emails thanks
5Quick response. Great results!
5Collecting data with his own software. He is a technical artist how did an impressive development for me! Thanks, Eric!!!
5Went above and beyond the expectation and communicated changes to scope requirements.
5great result, fast service and solution-oriented thinking
5It is always a pleasure to work with Eric - the results have gone beyond my expectations. I definetely recommend him!
5I strongly recommend to work with Eric. Task was completed on time and with a 100% compliance to requirements. Communication was easy and clear. Amazing freelancer!
5A very nice and communicative person. Very quick and accurate, with excellent results!
5Top freelancer
5Eric did a great job in creating a keyword search program. He has put some extra time in the work due to unforeseen complications. The result is very solid. Would definitely use him again and recommend him to others.
5No feedback given
0I will be using him again. Great work ethic.
5Eric was great to work with!!! He did his job very accurate and quick. I can really recommend Eric!
5Eric was able to quickly and fully scrape the data we needed. He was great to work with, transparent had good communication skills. I wasn't sure about putting this contract up but will go back to him again for similar work.
5Eric is a hardworking freelancer. He delivers quickly and with quality. Will definitely hire him again.
5