One of the most important skills a web scraper can have is being able to take the easier path and use an API where it's available. APIs, after all, are just rea

One of the most important skills a web scraper can have is being able to take the easier path and use an API where it's available. APIs, after all, are just really really nicely-formatted webpages that follow an additional set of generally agreed on standards. If you were interviewing a web scraper for your company, and they didn't know how to parse JSON, you'd probably think twice about giving them an offer. I think it's entirely appropriate -- and necessary -- to include JSON parsing in the list of exercises. (Also, I recently wrote "Web Scraping with Python" (O'Reilly), and had a whole CHAPTER on APIs)