Webscraping with APIs in Python

DESCRIPTION
The internet is an important source of data, and programmatic access to online data has revolutionized our ability as researchers to ask interesting questions across domains. This workshop, led by Professor Seth Frey, will provide a conceptual introduction to APIs (Application Programming Interface), which allow software programs to communicate with one another and facilitate your ability to access online data. Learners will be presented with executable code snippets and motivational examples to explore the utility of APIs for different use cases. We’ll do some hands on practice with one popular API, Twitter, and discuss API limits and practical workarounds, including time/cost tradeoffs.

By the end of this workshop learners will be able to:
– explain the basics of scraping data from the web using an API
– run Python code in a notebook
– modify code to retrieve specific data from Twitter
– identify additional learning resources for working with, and beyond, APIs

PREREQUISITES & TARGET LEARNERS

Learners with basic Python proficiency will gain the most from this workshop. But no prior knowledge of Python is required to learn about APIs or run the code. All learners wanting to run the code should obtain a Twitter API key in advance of the workshop. All members of the UC Davis community are welcome to attend.

DSI Affiliates receive priority registration.
You will receive a confirmation once you are accepted into the workshop.