The Food Trucks Association of Canada (FTAC) seeks to dive deep into the insights and prevalent issues of the food truck industry, exploring public forums and online communities where operators gather (such as Facebook, reddit, etc.). The goal of this project is to create a custom data scraping program in Python, as to collect large sets of data from shortlisted group forums. This scraper will be used as a pivotal tool, intended to automate and streamline the intricate data extraction process from multiple online forums. Thereby providing a robust dataset for FTAC to use in our existing data projects.

1. Preliminary Research and Requirements Gathering:

• Investigate various forums and platforms to understand their data structure and accessibility.
• Establish detailed requirements concerning the data types, formats, and categories needed.

2. Legal and Ethical Compliance Understanding:

• Research and comprehend data privacy laws relevant to the websites used.
• Establish strategies to ensure full compliance with these legal and ethical parameters throughout the project.

3. Designing the Data Scraper Architecture:

• Develop a conceptual design for the scraper, considering the varied structures of targeted platforms.
• Envision and layout the data flow, ensuring organized extraction, processing, and output.

4. Developing the Data Scraper:

• Code the scraper, ensuring it aligns with the established design and requirements.

5. Testing and Quality Assurance:

• Perform systematic testing of the scraper, ensuring it effectively extracts and categorizes data across all identified platforms.

6. Data Validation and Preliminary Analysis:

• Conduct a preliminary analysis of the data to identify any gaps, inconsistencies, or areas of improvement in the scraping process.

7. User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) Development:

• Develop a user-friendly interface that allows easy configuration and operation of the scraper.

8. Documentation and User Manual Creation:

• Compile comprehensive documentation detailing the scraper’s architecture, functionalities, and operation.
• Develop a user manual that provides clear instructions and use-cases for end-users, ensuring they can effectively utilize the tool.

The company will offer the following support:

1. Regular weekly check-in meetings with the team to ensure students are comfortable with tasks and have the necessary resources or information to succeed.
2. Project Lead/Supervisor will be available for contact on weekdays and will be able to answer any questions and clarify any issue, additionally options will be provided for additional one-on-one meetings if students require it.
3. Access to predefined public forums and any other relevant resources necessary for completing the project.
4. Clear communication channels for students to raise any concerns or ask questions throughout the project.