Okay, so, I tried building a subscriber tracker for Bryson DeChambeau, the golfer. I figured, this guy’s a big name, right? Lots of fans, growing like crazy. I wanted to see how his numbers changed over time, you know? So I started with, well, where else? YouTube.
I thought, there must be a way to get his subscriber count easily. I mean, it’s right there on his channel page. I tried digging into the page’s source code. You know, right-click, “View Page Source.” I was hunting for that subscriber number, hoping it would be in some sort of a neat little package that I could grab. I spent a good chunk of time scrolling through that mess of code. It was like finding a needle in a haystack, seriously. But, eventually, I got it!
Scraping the Data
Next, I thought, “Okay, I’ve got the data. Now how do I make it into something useful?” I needed a way to grab that subscriber count regularly, like every day, or every hour even. That’s where I started playing around with some web scraping tools. There are so many out there! I tried a few different ones – some were super complicated, others were simpler but didn’t do what I needed. It was a bit of a learning curve, to be honest.
I tried a few things, messed up a bunch, and then I did it! I finally found a tool that could grab the subscriber count from his YouTube channel. It was a bit clunky, but it worked. I had to set it up to run automatically, which was another challenge. But I figured it out, eventually, by just messing around with the settings and reading a bunch of tutorials online.
Storing the Data
Then, I needed a place to store all these numbers I was collecting. I mean, I didn’t want to just look at them once and then lose them, right? I wanted to see how they changed over time. So I thought, “Database! That’s the way to go.” I’m not really a database expert, but I know the basics. I set up a simple database, just a table with two columns: date and subscriber count. It wasn’t fancy, but it did the job.
I had to connect the web scraping tool to the database, which was another adventure. It took some trial and error, lots of Googling, and a few frustrating moments. But I finally got it working. Every time the scraper grabbed the subscriber count, it would automatically put it into the database. Pretty cool, huh?
Making It Visual
Now, I had all this data, but it was just a bunch of numbers in a table. Not very exciting. I wanted to see it visually, like a graph or something. I started looking into data visualization tools. I played around with a few different ones, and they were all pretty neat. I ended up picking one that was easy to use and could create some nice-looking charts.
Connecting the database to the visualization tool was, you guessed it, another challenge. But by this point, I was getting the hang of things. I figured it out pretty quickly, and soon enough, I had a beautiful graph showing Bryson DeChambeau’s subscriber growth over time. It was awesome to see it all come together.
So yeah, that’s how I built a subscriber tracker for Bryson DeChambeau. It wasn’t easy, but it was a fun project. I learned a lot along the way, and now I have this cool little tool that shows me how his fan base is growing. Pretty neat, right?
- Started with YouTube.
- Tried to find the subscriber count on the page.
- Scraped the page.
- Stored the data in a simple database.
- Created visuals to see the growth.
It was a lot of steps, a lot of stumbling around in the dark, but hey, I got there in the end! And now I can see how many subscribers that guy has at any time. Pretty cool!
