# Introducing Housefly: A Playground for Web Scraping

Web scraping is an essential skill for developers, but learning it can be tricky. That’s why I created [**Housefly**](https://housefly.cc), a hands-on project designed to teach web scraping through interactive exercises. Inspired by [Google Gruyere](https://google-gruyere.appspot.com/), Housefly provides a series of small tutorials with dedicated companion websites built *to be scraped*. The goal? To give you a safe, structured environment to practice and refine your scraping skills.

## Why Did I Make This?

I’ve seen countless tutorials that explain web scraping in theory, but very few offer real, controlled environments to experiment in. Housefly solves that by providing self-contained challenges where you scrape provided websites and verify your solutions against expected outputs. It’s built for hands-on learners who want to *do* rather than just *read*.

## How to Get Started

The few chapters are [live](https://www.housefly.cc/posts/section-1), and you can try it out today!

1. Clone the GitHub repo:
    
    ```bash
    git clone https://github.com/jonaylor89/housefly.git
    cd housefly
    ```
    
2. Navigate to Chapter 1 and explore the provided website.
    
3. Write your scraper in `apps/solution1/`.
    
4. Run the checker to validate your solution:
    
    ```bash
    npm run ca 1
    ```
    

More chapters are on the way, but for now, dive into the first challenge and start scraping!

👉 [Try Housefly on GitHub](https://github.com/jonaylor89/housefly)