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Data CollectionIntermediate to Advanced

Data Collection & Scraping

Website monitoring, price tracking, news aggregation, market research - Master automated data collection techniques

60 minutes

1.9k students

(4.8)

by n8n Academy

Web ScrapingAPI IntegrationData ProcessingMonitoringAnalytics

Updated 1 day ago

Common Applications

💰

Price Monitoring Alerts

Track product prices across multiple retailers

Intermediate

🕷️

Website Content Scraping

Extract articles, reviews, and structured data

Advanced

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API Data Collection

Aggregate data from multiple API sources

Intermediate

📰

News Aggregation

Collect and categorize news from various sources

Intermediate

📊

Market Research

Gather competitor and market intelligence

Advanced

👁️

Social Media Monitoring

Track mentions and sentiment across platforms

Advanced

Popular Data Sources

E-commerce Platforms

AmazoneBayShopify storesProduct catalogsPrice comparison sites

News & Media

News websitesRSS feedsBlog platformsPress releasesSocial media

Financial Data

Stock pricesCryptocurrency exchangesFinancial newsMarket data APIs

Real Estate

Property listingsRental platformsMarket trendsNeighborhood data

Job Markets

Job boardsCompany career pagesSalary dataSkills demand

Prerequisites

Understanding of HTML, CSS, and basic web technologies

Familiarity with APIs and HTTP requests

n8n instance (cloud or self-hosted)

Target websites or APIs for data collection

Data storage solution (database, spreadsheet, etc.)

Basic knowledge of data processing concepts

What You'll Learn

Automated website monitoring

Real-time price tracking

Content extraction and processing

API integration and data aggregation

Data validation and cleaning

Scheduled data collection

Alert and notification systems

Data export and storage

Performance monitoring

Error handling and recovery

Tutorial Sections

Introduction to Data Collection

Understanding data sources and collection strategies

10 minutes

Types of data sources and collection methods
Legal and ethical considerations for web scraping
Overview of n8n data collection nodes
Planning your data collection strategy
Setting up data storage and processing pipelines

Price Monitoring Alerts

Track product prices and get instant notifications

18 minutes

Setting up website monitoring workflows
HTML parsing and data extraction techniques
Price comparison and threshold alerts
Handling dynamic content and JavaScript
Creating price history tracking
Multi-store price comparison automation

Website Content Scraping

Extract and process website content automatically

20 minutes

Advanced CSS selector techniques
Handling pagination and infinite scroll
Image and file download automation
Content cleaning and formatting
Dealing with anti-scraping measures
Rate limiting and respectful scraping
Data validation and quality checks

API Data Collection

Integrate with APIs for structured data access

12 minutes

REST API integration best practices
Authentication and API key management
Handling rate limits and pagination
Data transformation and normalization
Error handling and retry mechanisms
Combining multiple API sources

Practical Example: Price Monitoring Workflow

Schedule Trigger

Set up automated checks every hour or daily

Web Scraping

Extract current price from target website

Price Comparison

Compare with previous price and threshold

Alert Notification

Send email or SMS when price drops below target

Ethical Scraping Best Practices

✅ Do's

• Respect robots.txt files
• Use reasonable request intervals
• Check website terms of service
• Use APIs when available
• Handle errors gracefully

❌ Don'ts

• Overload servers with requests
• Ignore rate limiting
• Scrape personal data without consent
• Violate copyright laws
• Use scraped data commercially without permission

🚀 Master Data Collection & Scraping!

Start this comprehensive tutorial and become proficient in automated data collection!