A web page is not only a document container. Today's rapid developments in computing and web technologies have transformed the web into a dynamic and real-time source of information.

At our end, we (the users) use web browsers (such as Google Chrome, Firefox Mozilla, Internet Explorer, and Safari) to access information from the web. Web browsers provide various document-based functionalities to users and contain application-level features that are often useful to web developers.

Web pages that users view or explore through their browsers are not only single documents. Various technologies exist that can be used to develop websites or web pages. A web page is a document that contains blocks of HTML tags. Most of the time, it is built with various sub-blocks linked as dependent or independent components from various interlinked technologies, including JavaScript and CSS. 

An understanding of the general concepts of web pages and the techniques of web development, along with the technologies found inside web pages, will provide more flexibility and control in the scraping process. A lot of the time, a developer can also employ reverse engineering techniques.

Reverse engineering is an activity that involves breaking down and examining the concepts that were required to build certain products. For more information on reverse engineering, please refer to the GlobalSpec article, How Does Reverse Engineering Work?, available at https://insights.globalspec.com/article/7367/how-does-reverse-engineering-work.

Here, we will introduce and explore a few of the techniques that can help and guide us in the process of data extraction.