A Guide to Scraping Walmart Product Data: Coding and No-Code Methods"

Walmart has proven to be large database of product data and even reviews. If you want to scrape it for data, you can learn how to get that done in the article below by learning the different ways it can be done.

Walmart continues to be one of the biggest retailers in the world and a significant player in the industry. They are a significant player in the e-commerce sector in terms of their offerings, earnings, and workforce. Currently, Walmart offers about 160 million products online, and as of April 2023, there were 268 million monthly visits to their website overall. Over the past few years, Walmart's online inventory has significantly increased. As a result, access to their inventory data can be used to unlock a lot of value.

Businesses can gain useful business insights by using its vast public product data pool, which includes product descriptions, ratings, pricing, and reviews. However, it would be impossible for anyone to collect this data manually given the wide range of items. This is why it’s the ideal use case for web scraping. Hence, I will be sharing some ways you can scrape this publicly accessible Walmart data without running into legal challenges, blocks, or a ban. But first, let me briefly tell you what Walmart scraping is.

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What is Walmart Scraping?

Walmart scraping is the practice of gathering relevant product information from the online marketplace using scripts or other automated methods. Thanks to its broad selection of goods, affordable prices, and robust online and offline presence, Walmart has established itself as a household name in the retail sector, particularly in the United States.

However, one of the most challenging e-commerce sites to collect product data from is Walmart. This is due to the fact that the anti-spam technologies the website has implemented, coupled with IP tracking and blocking, would prevent web scrapers from accessing the site. Scrapers are also prevented from accessing and gathering site data by cookies, captchas, and other AI-based methods.

However, there is a solution to get around this issue for good. I'm going to discuss some of the most efficient ways to successfully scrape Walmart data in the other section of this article. By leveraging these methods, you can automate the collection of product data such as descriptions, prices, ratings, reviews, and many more. Without further ado, let's dive right in.

Ways to scrape Walmart.

Scraping Walmart with Python.

First on our list is no other than the customization of the Walmart scraper with the Python programming language. Creating your own web scraper has its advantages, including complete control over your scraper and what data to scrape. JavaScript and Python are two very good programming languages for this, but Python is highly recommended because it has really good libraries that make web scraping easy.

In light of this, let's examine the Python approach to scraping Walmart data. To begin, you need to set up your Python environment.

Step 1: Start by downloading Python from the official website and installing it on your computer. Install Python on your computer from the official website.

Step 2: Create or open the *.py file in which you want to write the code. The prerequisite libraries need to be installed first. For the sake of this lesson, we shall use two libraries: Requests and BeautifulSoup. With the help of BeautifulSoup, you can parse the website's HTML to find the information you need after collecting it using Requests. Use the command-line interface to install them by typing the following:

import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

Step 3: Starting off, let's send a GET request to the target website.

target_url=" https://www.walmart.com/ip/Lenovo-Ideapad-3i-Chromebook-15-6-FHD-Intel-Celeron-N4500-4GB-RAM-64GB-eMMC-Arctic-Grey-82N4002HUS/951435754"

Step 4: By parsing a header array and passing it to the 'requests.get' method in the following format, you can send extra headers with a request:

headers = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/83.0.4103.61 Safari/537.36'} html = requests.get(target_url, headers=headers) print(html.text)

If all goes according to plan, you should be able to see an actual product page HTML on the screen.

Step 5: Go to the Walmart product page you want to scrape. I'll walk you through the process of scraping a Lenovo laptop's Walmart product page for this demonstration. Hence, determining the precise data that must be extracted is important. We'll concentrate on scraping information on the product name, price, and number of reviews.

Step 6: To do this, we need to inspect the Walmart product page. In order to do this, right-click anywhere on the page and choose 'Inspect' from the menu that appears.

Step 7: To scrape the product name, you will notice that it is h1 tag.

soup = BeautifulSoup(html.text) product_name = soup.find("h1", attrs={"itemprop": "name"}).text

Step 8: For price, the data is in a span tag.

price = soup.find("span", {"itemprop": "price"}).text

You can do this for other items, like ratings and reviews.

Step 9: After that, we need to create an empty list to hold the data. By using the element's property, Beautiful Soup is prompted to select the precise h1 and span elements.

Walmart_product_data = [{ "product_name": product_name, "price": price, }]

Advantages

The programmers have full control of the web scraper.
It can be used to scrape Walmart data at scale.

Disadvantages

It is a complex process for non-coders.
It can be time-consuming.
It is not pocket-friendly.

Using Walmart API

Using the official Walmart API or a third-party API is another effective way to gather data from Walmart. As regards the official API, Walmart provides a Walmart Marketplace API that gives seller applications the tools they need to handle products, orders, prices, special offers, inventory, and reports on the online marketplace. The Walmart Developer Center also provides access to all the tools required to directly integrate with the Walmart Marketplace API.

To use these Marketplace APIs, you need to go through Walmart Seller Help's registration process. However, with all the benefits that come with the Walmart API, it does have its limitations. For instance, you are permitted to perform a certain number of API operations every hour. That is, a maximum of 10 feeds can be delivered every hour. This is where third-party scraper APIs are helpful.

These third-party API tools can be used to gain access to more Walmart product information. The Walmart Data Extractor from Apify is one of the best. It is a quite straightforward tool to use. However, in order to start using it, you must have an Apify account. For a more detailed explanation, please read about launching actors via the API in the Apify documentation. You can also visit the Walmart Developer Portal the learn on how to integrate the Walmart API.

Advantages

They are affordable methods of obtaining Walmart data, particularly for developers.
You don't need to handle proxies and infrastructure or develop difficult scraping code to use Walmart's scraping APIs.
APIs help save time.

Disadvantages

You cannot use APIs if you don’t have prior programming experience.

Using Already-made Web Scrapers

Apart from building a custom Walmart scraper or using the Walmart API, you can scrape this e-commerce giant’s publicly available data with already-made web scrapers. As you probably noticed from the first approach, it's not exactly simple to scrape Walmart using Python and BeautifulSoup. There are a lot of companies, especially proxy providers, out there that offer these tools at a relatively fair price. Hence, one very reliable already-made Walmart scraper is one offered by Bright Data.

The Walmart Scraper from Bright Data is an excellent tool that includes proxy networks that are at the cutting edge. In simple terms, this tool entails using the Bright Data Web Scraper IDE. The beauty of using the Web Scraper IDE is that Walmart won’t be able to instantly detect and block your scraping activities. This Walmart scraper can help you collect as much data as you need quickly and completely. This tool can help you gather data at scale.

To use Bright Data’s Web Scraper IDE,

Step 1: You must first create a Bright Data account.

Step 2: Afterward, sign in and select the 'Datasets & Web Scraper IDE' button on the left side of the screen.

Step 3: After that, you would need to navigate to "My scrapers" on a different console. If you have any web scrapers, you should see a list of them in this field. Assume you are using this web scraping tool for the first time. You should select "Develop a web scraper (IDE)" because you won't have any web scrapers.

You will be given the option of either starting from scratch or using one of the available templates. To scrape Walmart, select the 'Start from scratch' option. Keep in mind that doing so would start the Bright Data Web Scraper IDE. You would observe that it is composed of several different windows.

To use this ready-made web scraper to successfully scrape Walmart, follow the instructions provided by Bright Data.

Advantages

Already-made web scrapers are cost-efficient compared to paying a developer.
They don't require a lot of programming experience.

Disadvantages

Not all already-made web scrapers support Walmart scraping.

Using no-code Walmart Scrapers

Finally, you can use a no-code web scraping tool to extract Walmart data. If you pay close attention, you'll see that some of the methods I discussed earlier require at least some level of programming knowledge. As such, many of these tools are automation tools that require no programming skills. Hence, this method is ideal for you if you want to web-scrape Walmart data but don't know how to code.

Even with the free access it gives you to Walmart data, ProWebScraper stands out among the many of these products that are available on the market. With this tool, you can help scrape the first 100 pages for free.

To scrape Walmart data with ProWebScraper,

Step 1: Visit the ProWebScraper Walmart scraper page and click on the 'Let’s Scrape Walmart Data' button to get started. If you have not registered on the platform, you need to do so to scrape Walmart data.

Step 2: After you have logged in, click 'R2R Agents' on the side menu bar, then select 'Walmart Scraper.'

Step 3: Next, select your preferred country. There are actually two options: the United States and Canada.

Step 4: The next step would be to input the URL of the Walmart webpage you are looking to scrape. When you are done, click 'Save & Run Scraper' to initiate the scraper.

Step 5: After the scraper is done, click the eye icon to preview your scraped Walmart data. To export the data, click the download icon next to the eye icon. You can export the data in both JSON and CSV file formats.

Advantages

No prior coding knowledge is necessary.
Even for first-time users, they are simple to use and understand.

Disadvantages

With so many no-code web scraping solutions available, it can be challenging to decide which one is best for your company or project.

FAQs

Q. Does Walmart Allow Scraping?

No, scraping is not permitted by Walmart. They have a system in place that can tell if a request is coming from a real browser or a bot. To determine if you are a robot and to prevent robots from getting inside, software like reCAPTCHA is used. Along with that, Walmart will block your IP if you attempt to scrape reasonable data. Nevertheless, you can use the methods for scraping Walmart that I've covered to prevent this. Use rotating headers and proxies as well for a better experience.

Q. What Kind of Data Can Be Scraped from Walmart?

Utilizing Walmart's online marketplace platform, crucial information can be extracted, including but not limited to product names, prices, reviews, ratings, and detailed product descriptions. This data is vital for industry players to perform competitive analysis and make well-informed decisions.

Q. How Best Can I Scrape Walmart?

When it comes to scraping data from Walmart, the best approach really depends on the individual doing the scraping. As mentioned earlier, it could be helpful to use the official Walmart scraper or build your own web scraper. If you're not comfortable with programming, you could also consider using a no-code scraper. Ultimately, it's all relative and depends on your specific needs and skillset.

Conclusion

Now you can see the different ways you can scrape Walmart. Scraping this e-commerce platform may not be as easy as others, but it is possible. I have shared some of the best ways to do this, and I sincerely hope this information can help improve your Walmart scraping tasks.