Creating the API
We will use Flask which is a micro web framework written in Python.
pip install Flask
Following is the starter code for our flask application.
Python3
# We import the Flask Class, an instance of # this class will be our WSGI application. from flask import Flask # We create an instance of this class. The first # argument is the name of the application’s module # or package. __name__ is a convenient shortcut for # this that is appropriate for most cases.This is # needed so that Flask knows where to look for resources # such as templates and static files. app = Flask(__name__) # We use the route() decorator to tell Flask what URL # should trigger our function. @app.route('/') def cricgfg(): return "Welcome to CricGFG!" # main driver function if __name__ == "__main__": # run() method of Flask class runs the # application on the local development server. app.run(debug=True) |
Output:
Open localhost on your browser:
We would now add our code of Web Scraping into this and some helper methods provided by Flask to properly return JSON data.
Understanding Jsonify
jsonify is a function in Flask. It serializes data to JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. Consider the following code:
Python3
from flask import Flask, jsonify app = Flask(__name__) @app.route('/') def cricgfg(): # Creating a dictionary with data to test jsonfiy. result = { "Description": "Live score England vs India 3rd Test,Pataudi \ Trophy, 2021", "Location": "Headingley, Leeds", "Status": "England lead by 223 runs", "Current": "Day 2 | Post Tea Session", "Team A": "England", "Team A Score": "301/3 (96.0)", "Team B": "India", "Team B Score": "78", "Full Scoreboard": "https://sports.ndtv.com//cricket/live-scorecard\ /england-vs-india-3rd-test-leeds-enin08252021199051", "Credits": "NDTV Sports" } return jsonify(result) if __name__ == "__main__": app.run(debug=True) |
Output:
Now it’s time to merge all our codes. Let’s Start!
Python3
import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup from flask import Flask, jsonify app = Flask(__name__) @app.route('/') def cricgfg(): html_text = requests.get('https://sports.ndtv.com/cricket/live-scores').text soup = BeautifulSoup(html_text, "html.parser") sect = soup.find_all('div', class_='sp-scr_wrp ind-hig_crd vevent') section = sect[0] description = section.find('span', class_='description').text location = section.find('span', class_='location').text current = section.find('div', class_='scr_dt-red').text link = "https://sports.ndtv.com/" + section.find( 'a', class_='scr_ful-sbr-txt').get('href') try: status = section.find_all('div', class_="scr_dt-red")[1].text block = section.find_all('div', class_='scr_tm-wrp') team1_block = block[0] team1_name = team1_block.find('div', class_='scr_tm-nm').text team1_score = team1_block.find('span', class_='scr_tm-run').text team2_block = block[1] team2_name = team2_block.find('div', class_='scr_tm-nm').text team2_score = team2_block.find('span', class_='scr_tm-run').text result = { "Description": description, "Location": location, "Status": status, "Current": current, "Team A": team1_name, "Team A Score": team1_score, "Team B": team2_name, "Team B Score": team2_score, "Full Scoreboard": link, "Credits": "NDTV Sports" } except: pass return jsonify(result) if __name__ == "__main__": app.run(debug=True) |
Output in the Browser:
Here we have created our own Cricket API.
Create Cricket Score API using Web Scraping in Flask
Cricket is one of the famous outdoor sport played worldwide. There are very few APIs providing live scoreboards and none of them are free to use. Using any of the scoreboards available we can create API for ourselves. This method not only works for Cricket Scoreboard but also for any information available online. Following is the flow in which this blog would guide to create an API and deploy it.
- Setting up the App Directory
- Web Scrape data from NDTV Sports.
- Beautiful Soup in Python would be used.
- Create an API.
- Flask would be used.
- Heroku would be used for deployment,
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