BookTrack

A basic Python application to scrape book listings from a Big Bookseller and save results to a local SQLite database. You can also export the database contents to an XLSX file.

I was interested by the changes in price and the rankings for my textbook and run these scripts as a launchd daemon (using LaunchControl for Mac) to track this over time. No guarantees that this will work for others but it has been effective enough for my needs.

Structure

• main.py: Entry point for the application. Scrapes a Big Bookseller and saves results to the database.
• scraper/: Contains scraping logic.
• db/: Contains database logic and export utilities.
• models/: Data models (if needed).
• config_template.py: Template for sensitive configuration variables. Copy to config_private.py and fill in your values.
• requirements.txt: Python dependencies.

Configuration

1. Copy config_template.py to config_private.py and fill in your values for ITEM_ID and EXPORT_PATH.
2. Do not commit config_private.py to version control.

Usage

1. Install dependencies:
   pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Run the application to scrape and save a listing:
   python main.py

3. To export all database entries to an XLSX file, run the export script:
   python db/export_to_xls.py
   The export path is set in your config file (EXPORT_PATH).

Notes

• The export script (db/export_to_xls.py) is a stand-alone script. Run it whenever you want to generate an XLSX file from the current database contents.
• The application uses Selenium with undetected-chromedriver for reliable scraping.
• All sensitive configuration should be kept in config.py (not versioned).