Web scraping is the process of extracting data from websites. It involves automated software (often referred to as web scrapers or web crawlers) that retrieves information from web pages by accessing their HTML code and extracting the desired content.

Here's how web scraping typically works:

Requesting Web Pages:

The web scraper sends HTTP requests to the target website's server, requesting specific web pages or URLs.

Downloading HTML Content:

Once the server responds to the request, the web scraper downloads the HTML content of the requested web pages.

Parsing HTML:

The web scraper parses the HTML content to identify and extract the desired data elements, such as text, links, images, or tables.