Handling Missing Data

Real websites are messy.

Some items miss fields:

• no price
• no rating
• broken tags

Your scraper must not crash.

Bad approach

price = item.select_one(".price").text  # may crash

Safe approach

tag = item.select_one(".price")
price = tag.text.strip() if tag else "N/A"

Wrap in try-except

try:
    price = item.select_one(".price").text.strip()
except AttributeError:
    price = "N/A"

Flow

flowchart TD
  A[Find Tag] --> B{Exists?}
  B -->|Yes| C[Read Text]
  B -->|No| D[Use Default]

Remember

• Missing data is normal
• Always code defensively