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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Using Python to Access Web Data by University of Michigan

4.8
stars
44,161 ratings

About the Course

This course will show how one can treat the Internet as a source of data. We will scrape, parse, and read web data as well as access data using web APIs. We will work with HTML, XML, and JSON data formats in Python. This course will cover Chapters 11-13 of the textbook “Python for Everybody”. To succeed in this course, you should be familiar with the material covered in Chapters 1-10 of the textbook and the first two courses in this specialization. These topics include variables and expressions, conditional execution (loops, branching, and try/except), functions, Python data structures (strings, lists, dictionaries, and tuples), and manipulating files. This course covers Python 3....
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(256 Reviews)

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(217 Reviews)

Top reviews

SM

Jun 18, 2020

This course was really interesting and did a good job introducing complicated topics in usefully simplified form. It was a pleasure to listen to the instructor and I got everything I wanted out of it.

AB

Jun 6, 2019

Getting a bit more challenging than the earlier courses in the specialization. The exercises require more struggle, but all the information is there. Another step along the way. Thank you, Dr. Chuck!

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7576 - 7600 of 7,952 Reviews for Using Python to Access Web Data

By Achal J

Jul 28, 2020

The course is awesome, really awesome but there's one thing, which I didn't really liked, the part of REST API and API what taught at a very fast pace, and the the course should have divulged more into API and how to handle them and use them, I mean there are lots and lot of pubic API's available and we still discuss about paid API's. That really disappointed me.

But still, Dr.Chuck is one of the best educator on Coursera and I would highly recommend this course, but you would need to google a ton of things.

By sankara k

Oct 5, 2018

I feel that some of the videos here were short and fast. JSON could have been dealt in more detail. It would have been nice to have a piece where you write a program only to dump the JS and then use that dump to show how the individual elements can be retrieved, counted etc. It was not intuitive for me to know that print ("Place id", js["results"][0]["place_id"]) would print place_id. I had to dump the JS, look down and see the tree structure and get it.

Twitter API video especially was too fast and short.

By Adryan J M

Sep 20, 2019

The biggest frustration I have with this course is that the examples worked through in the class don't exactly correlate with the assignments we are given. I will understand the lectures for the most part but then end up completely lost during the assignments. I know the point of the course is to struggle and work through problems but the retention is difficult. I have had to seek help through outside resources because I don't feel like the course adequately prepares us for the assignments.

By Susanne E

Jan 2, 2018

This course progresses in large steps. It probably gives a good overview over the topic, how to access web data, but the commands are very specific and it moves on very quickly to the next section without going into much depth. In that sense it is very different from the first two courses which taught the basics at length. It is still a very useful course. I feel like if I ever have to write a program to access web data I at least know what structures there are and which tools to look for.

By 김태림

Feb 14, 2020

contray to precedent two courses, this course was too difficult and unfamiliar. When I had taken other courses, I've been sure that I fully understand what I learned. However, in this course, access web data is completely different to what I learned at prerequisite lectures. It requires me to use unfamiliar library and functions, but explanation about them was not enough. Thus, even though I finished the lecture and passed all assignment, I'm not sure that I understand what i learned.

By Diego R

Aug 9, 2019

Most of the times I really didn't get a solution or an answer every time I did a question in the discussion section. Most of the times the teaching staff answer me with another question or a vague answer. I know that the strategy behind that tipes of answers is to encourage the students to thinks by themselves. But in some cases, it seems very excessive. In any physical class, the teacher will be happy and predisposed to answer and give you a solution to your problem.

By Artem M

Jul 22, 2019

In the previous courses all the assignments could be completed just through making a code with the parts that were explained in the videos, but it's slightly another thing in this one. In the second assignment there were included such things as SSL and one cannot make the task right without adding SSL in the code (SSL weren't among the course topics).

Nevertheless, the API part is the only one which I had troubles with, other ones are great as usual.

By Fabricio A B C

Aug 21, 2020

El curso es muy básico para aprender Acces Web data, pero para usar python con Acces Web Data siendo principiante con python supongo que esta esta bien, los ejercicios son muy sencillo a excepciona de uno que otro que el programa ejemplo te puede llegar a confundir y entorpecer un poco si dependes mucho de el. Tiene un toque de dejar a un lado la explicacion a profundidad en algunos aspecto para ser mas practico, pero como dije, en lo elemental.

By Tolga S

Apr 17, 2016

All in all, I liked the class. I would like to learn about this topic and the database access using Python, and I still think this is a very good beginning. I like the enthusiasm of the instructor, but I think he short sells many of the things he is teaching. I would also suggest providing more challenging assignments, for instance, as optional ones. These may be such that they require reading the referred text in addition to watching the videos.

By Wenjia Z

Mar 1, 2021

for real beginners of python whose knowledge mainly comes from the previous two courses in this specialization, this course is not good enough - the content is very different from the basics in the previous two courses and is not well explained. Assignments are not so difficult (if the student reads the codes from examples provided by the instructor), but it can be frustrating not to understand the point of the codes. TA can be more supportive.

By Abbas J

Oct 18, 2020

This was one of the weaker courses in the specialization. While urllib has it's uses, requests should have been introduced as well (and the course should have been longer). A more in-depth treatment of BeautifulSoap was also warranted.

More real-world examples, as well as more exercises, quizzes and assignments would have made this course much better.

Dr. Severance remains an outstanding teacher who can and should challenge his students more.

By Warnakulasuriya S A F

May 6, 2020

I would have rated 5 stars but, in my point of view I think this course is just beyond the limits for a beginner. Some facts were quite hard to understand and some codes were too hard to catch upon. Overall, the course I think is not that great for a beginner, as the name of the course'Python For Everybody, everyone should be able to understand the facts. But, It's always a pleasure getting into a course like this and learn something new.

By Sarah H

Jun 1, 2020

This was a large jump from courses 1 and 2 in the specialization. This course is not self-contained and there are really two tracks to get through it. The first involves tweaking existing code but not necessarily understanding everything (which is actually fine), the second is doing lots of research online (also fine - it's ok if a course facilitates learning rather than teaching everything but not sure it's at an 'everybody' level).

By Kaminskaya S

Oct 28, 2020

Comparing to the previous courses of the specialization this one is awful. I'm thinking about to drop it. By now I've completed almost 4 weeks. I liked the first week (it is the best week of the course), second week lessons aren't profound and the others weeks are kind of a mess. I hope last weeks were designed better. Being honest I feel disappointed because I haven't happened to learn as much as I learned from the courses 1 and 2.

By Levin F

Jan 21, 2018

I have rated the two previous python courses with five stars. What changed now is that I have realized that I didn't have enough practice all along. I really wish they added practices which are not mandatory but still fully supported by the auto-grader. I really don't think this is too much to ask for, considering I am paying $50 per month. Otherwise: good lessons, challenging practices, and great support from the course forum.

By CJ

Jun 15, 2020

Although I finished this course, I do not think I can directly apply what I learned to solve real world problems. It seems like I have to watch some more YouTube videos teaching web scrapping. It is surely always good to know the background knowlege behind things, say how web standards are set up, but solving real problems is the gist. I am pessimistic about how this course will help me achieve that after I finish the course.

By David W

Aug 26, 2020

The web services portion of the Python for Everybody specialization seems out of place; an introduction to an introductory course in web scraping. It was somewhat informative. However, I was more interested in developing basic Python programming skills (e.g. writing functions, classes, decorators, etc) to solve problems. Parsing data from websites did not interest me. Happy to finish.

By Jeffrey W

Apr 17, 2018

This course was good but still slightly disappointing. I feel that the teacher should've more thoroughly explained a couple of the topics on the course, including hyperlinks, anchor tags, and how the material in the course connects with the real internet. Additionally, the homework assignments were a little too hard and introduced topics that were not thoroughly covered in the videos.

By Oleksandr P

May 13, 2021

I did have a background of around 3 months of learning Python so I was able to go through the course in 3 days. Comparing to other online course materials very extremely easy and assignments were simply "change a few lines" from what you saw in the lecture. For beginners might be a good fit, but wasn't for me. The only reason I stuck with it to get that certificate for my linkedin

By jose c

Jul 14, 2019

El contenido del curso es denso, sin embargo el Dr. Chuck nuevamente explica detalladamente que esta sucediendo en el código, como facilitar el trabajo con el uso de librerías que son muy útiles para este tipo de tareas, el curso en lineas generales es confuso pero no porque haya habido una mala explicación del mismo solo que el contenido del curso lleva tiempo entenderlo.

By Valen A N

May 19, 2020

It was good as an overview course for someone who already knows a lot about the web. However, a beginner can have difficulties coping up with the course because many topics are simply bombarded on you and they are fairly technical. This is the reason why you should not take this course if you do not see yourself using the information from this course anytime in the future.

By Davide C

Jun 6, 2016

The course was a bit too shallow for me, the techniques shown are very basic examples of what can be learnt using stock python libraries (json, socket, urllib, ElementTree) or external (BeautifulSoup).

I really expected something more, for instance authentication techniques, or methods to parse complex websites, rather or in addition to the basics shown here.

By John L J

Mar 19, 2020

The course is solid, and give a great down and dirty, fast paced understanding of the subject matter. My only con is your REALLY need to pay attention to every aspect of the codes otherwise you will miss key information necessary to make the assignments doable instead of hair pulling frustrations. However once you find that everything falls into place.

By Sushma R

Jul 3, 2020

I left some of the concepts were too fast, As the course says it is for beginner he should have went bit slow and stressed some important programs and I didn't understand when he suddenly jumped on topic to topic to fast, whenever he teaches a topic he wants to give two three examples and then go to new, but he was fast and he was in a hurry

By Jayant G

Sep 15, 2020

The Assignments were not challenging at all they did not make me think much and also the course material was not in more in detail especially the material for Week 6 where I expected to learn more about REST Architecture but I wasn't much emphasized and also the part where BeautifulSoup was explained could have gone in more detail.