Web Scraping Covid-19 Statistics

Inspiration

Our team wanted to make finding COVID-19 statistics of all 50 states simple and easy. As students, we have the most experience in languages such as Java and C++ and some members had a little experience in Python. We decided to push ourselves and implement a process that none of our team had prior experience in by using Python. During these uncertain times, we wanted to create an easy way to look at COVID-19 data.

What it does

Our project implements a web scraper to extract coronavirus case statistics by state, sorts them by one of three predetermined sorting methods, and displays them in an easily accessible way to the user.

How we built it

To achieve this, our team of four split into two teams. One team handled web scraping data and the other team built a GUI to access the data.

The web scraping team used ParseHub to web scrape a specific website for coronavirus information and took advantage of Python’s default libraries and properties of dictionaries to handle sorting.

The GUI team used pygame to build the GUI. By implementing functions that respond to mouse clicks, we were able to add functionality to each of the on screen options. We also incorporated a home button that takes the user back to the main screen to pick another option if wanted.

Challenges we ran into

One of the challenges we ran into was outputting the data collected onto the screen in an effective manner. Due to the size of the data collected, all of the data for the states could not fit on the screen. While we couldn't wrap the text properly, we worked around that as best as we could by allowing it to print to an IDE console so we could show off the web scraping team’s work.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The GUI team is proud of the user interface they built that included a functioning search bar and buttons. The web scraping team is proud to have implemented a web scraping and sorting tool that is both compact and efficient. All team members are proud to have created a project using Python, a language that none of us had too much experience in prior to this weekend.

What we learned

Our entire team learned the basics of Python; the GUI team gained experience with Pygame, and the web scraping team gained experience with ParseHub and sorting properties.

What's next for Web Scraping Covid-19 Statistics

We are disappointed that we were unable to display the COVID-19 statistics in a readable format. In the future, we can add that functionality. We may also want to add more options for data sorts and different types of data, including death counts, case counts by city, active cases, test counts, and recovery counts.