In this article, we will learn how to scrape property listings from Booking.com using Objective-C. We will use the NSURLSession and HTML Parser libraries to fetch the HTML content and then extract key information like property name, location, ratings, etc.
Prerequisites
To follow along, you will need:
Import Frameworks
At the top of your .m file, import the required frameworks:
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import <HTMLParser/HTMLParser.h>
Define URL
—
Let's define the URL we want to scrape:
NSURL* url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"<https://www.booking.com/searchresults.html?ss=New+York&>..."];
We won't paste the full URL here.
Set User Agent
We need to set a valid user agent header:
NSMutableURLRequest* request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[request setValue:@"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) ..." forHTTPHeaderField:@"User-Agent"];
This will make the request appear to come from a real browser.
Fetch HTML Page
We can use NSURLSession to get the page HTML:
NSURLSessionDataTask* task = [[NSURLSession sharedSession] dataTaskWithRequest:request completionHandler:^(NSData * _Nullable data, NSURLResponse * _Nullable response, NSError * _Nullable error) {
if(data) {
// Parse HTML
}
}];
[task resume];
We make sure data was returned before parsing.
Parse HTML
To parse the HTML, we use HTML Parser's
NSError* error;
HTMLDocument* doc = [HTMLDocument parseHTML:data error:&error];
This loads the HTML into an HTMLDocument object.
Extract Property Cards
The property cards have a
NSArray* cards = [doc findElementsWithAttribute:@"data-testid" match:@"property-card"];
This finds all matching elements.
Loop Through Cards
We can iterate through the cards:
for(HTMLElement* card in cards) {
// Extract data from card
}
Inside this loop we will extract information from each card element.
Extract Title
To get the title, we search for the
NSString* title = [[card findElementWithAttribute:@"data-testid" match:@"title"] text];
We grab the text content.
Extract Location
Similarly, the address is under a
NSString* location = [[card findElementWithAttribute:@"data-testid" match:@"address"] text];
The pattern is the same for other fields.
Extract Rating
The star rating
NSString* rating = [[card findElementWithClass:@"e4755bbd60"] attribute:@"aria-label"];
Here we get the
Extract Review Count
The review count text is inside a
NSString* reviewCount = [[card findElementWithClass:@"abf093bdfe"] text];
Extract Description
The description is in a
NSString* description = [[card findElementWithClass:@"d7449d770c"] text];
Print Extracted Data
We can print out the extracted data:
NSLog(@"Name: %@", title);
NSLog(@"Location: %@", location);
NSLog(@"Rating: %@", rating);
// etc...
And that covers scraping Booking.com property listings in Objective-C! Let me know if you have any other questions.
Full Code
Here is the complete Objective-C code:
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import <HTMLParser/HTMLParser.h>
int main() {
NSURL* url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://www.booking.com/searchresults.en-gb.html?ss=New+York&checkin=2023-03-01&checkout=2023-03-05&group_adults=2"];
NSMutableURLRequest* request = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[request setValue:@"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) ..." forHTTPHeaderField:@"User-Agent"];
NSURLSessionDataTask* task = [[NSURLSession sharedSession] dataTaskWithRequest:request completionHandler:^(NSData * _Nullable data, NSURLResponse * _Nullable response, NSError * _Nullable error) {
if(data) {
NSError* error;
HTMLDocument* doc = [HTMLDocument parseHTML:data error:&error];
NSArray* cards = [doc findElementsWithAttribute:@"data-testid" match:@"property-card"];
for(HTMLElement* card in cards) {
NSString* title = [[card findElementWithAttribute:@"data-testid" match:@"title"] text];
NSString* location = [[card findElementWithAttribute:@"data-testid" match:@"address"] text];
NSString* rating = [[card findElementWithClass:@"e4755bbd60"] attribute:@"aria-label"];
NSString* reviewCount = [[card findElementWithClass:@"abf093bdfe"] text];
NSString* description = [[card findElementWithClass:@"d7449d770c"] text];
NSLog(@"Name: %@", title);
NSLog(@"Location: %@", location);
NSLog(@"Rating: %@", rating);
NSLog(@"Review Count: %@", reviewCount);
NSLog(@"Description: %@", description);
}
}
}];
[task resume];
}
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