How to Open a .txt File, Scrape Titles, and Save to a CSV in Python

Learn how to read URLs from a .txt file, scrape webpage titles using BeautifulSoup, and save the results to a CSV file in Python.
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How to Open a .txt File, Scrape Titles, and Save to a CSV in Python

If you're working with web scraping in Python, you might encounter a scenario where you have a .txt file containing multiple URLs, and you want to extract the titles of the web pages linked by those URLs. In this guide, we'll walk through the steps to accomplish this, covering everything from reading a .txt file to writing the scraped data into a .csv file.

Understanding the Problem

When attempting to read URLs from a .txt file, some common issues may arise, such as:

Incorrect handling of line breaks from the text file.

Extracting the webpage title incorrectly using the BeautifulSoup library.

By addressing these issues, you can efficiently gather the titles of all specified webpages and save them in a structured format.

The Solution Breakdown

Step 1: Reading URLs from a .txt File

The first step in your code should be to read the URLs from the file correctly. Lines in text files often include an inherent newline character (\n) at the end, so you'll want to strip these out. Here’s how you can do it:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

In this snippet:

We open the file with a context manager which ensures the file is properly closed afterward.

Each URL is stripped of excess whitespace, including line breaks, creating a clean list of URLs.

Step 2: Scraping Titles with BeautifulSoup

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Step 3: Saving the Scraped Titles to a CSV File

Finally, you want to save the titles into a .csv file. You can do this with the following code snippet:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

This ensures each title from the list is written into the file as a new row.

Final Consolidated Code

Here’s how everything looks when put together:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can efficiently open a .txt file, scrape the titles of each webpage mentioned, and store the results in a .csv file, making your data management much more organized. Whether you are working on a small personal project or a larger web scraping task, mastering these techniques can greatly enhance your productivity.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out! Happy coding!