unit-5.md

Unit 5: Networks, and Processing Data from the Internet

Prerequisites: Datastores, and Processing CSV Data

Learning Objectives

In this unit, we'll learn how to use Python to process data from the Internet, focusing on data returned by web services in JSON format.

Slides

Discussions and Notes

• Computer Networks, the Internet, and HTTP
• Web Services and APIs
• Information Security and Privacy
• Ethics, Malware, and Hacking
• Environment Variables

Reference Documents

• Issuing HTTP Requests:
  • The requests Package
• Processing JSON-formatted data:
  • The json Module
• Processing HTML-formatted data:
  • The beautifulsoup Package
• Automated Web Browsing (a.k.a. "scraping"):
  • The selenium Package
• Reading API Credentials from Environment Variables:
  • The dotenv Package
  • The os Module, focusing on environment variable capabilities

Activities and Exercises

• "Web Requests" Exercise
• "API Client" Exercise
• "Robo Advisor" Project