Scrape book titles and prices from a fake bookstore site built for practicing. You'll use BeautifulSoup to read the HTML.

Install: pip install requests beautifulsoup4

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup   # BeautifulSoup reads and navigates HTML

url = "https://books.toscrape.com"
response = requests.get(url)   # download the webpage (same as your browser would)

# Parse the HTML into a structure we can search — "html.parser" is built into Python
soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser")

# find_all() returns a list of every HTML element matching that tag and CSS class
# We use class_= (with underscore) because "class" is a reserved word in Python
books = soup.find_all("article", class_="product_pod")

for book in books:
    title = book.h3.a["title"]                        # navigate the HTML tree to get the title attribute
    price = book.find("p", class_="price_color").text  # .text strips the HTML tags, leaving just the text
    print(f"{title}: {price}")

Fetch Pokémon stats directly from the official Pokémon API. No login, no key, completely free.

Install: pip install requests

import requests

# .lower() converts the input to lowercase — the API requires lowercase names
name = input("Enter a Pokémon name (e.g. pikachu): ").lower()

# Build the URL with the Pokémon name plugged in using an f-string
url = f"https://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/{name}"
response = requests.get(url)

# status_code 200 means success; 404 means the Pokémon wasn't found
if response.status_code == 200:
    data = response.json()   # convert the JSON response to a Python dictionary

    print(f"\n{data['name'].capitalize()}")        # .capitalize() makes first letter uppercase
    print(f"  Height: {data['height'] / 10} m")   # API gives height in decimeters; divide by 10 for meters
    print(f"  Weight: {data['weight'] / 10} kg")  # API gives weight in hectograms; divide by 10 for kg

    print("\n  Stats:")
    for stat in data["stats"]:             # data["stats"] is a list of stat objects
        stat_name  = stat["stat"]["name"]  # each stat object has a nested dict with the name
        stat_value = stat["base_stat"]     # and a "base_stat" number
        print(f"    {stat_name}: {stat_value}")
else:
    print("Pokémon not found! Check the spelling.")

Fetch today's NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day. Get a free API key instantly at api.nasa.gov (no credit card needed).

Install: pip install requests

import requests

# APIs use keys to track who is making requests — get a free one at api.nasa.gov
# DEMO_KEY works for testing but has a low daily limit
API_KEY = "DEMO_KEY"

# The ? in the URL starts the "query string" — extra parameters sent with the request
url = f"https://api.nasa.gov/planetary/apod?api_key={API_KEY}"
response = requests.get(url)
data = response.json()   # converts the JSON response into a Python dictionary

# Pull values out of the dictionary using their key names
print(f"Title: {data['title']}")        # the name of today's image
print(f"Date:  {data['date']}")         # date in YYYY-MM-DD format
print(f"URL:   {data['url']}")          # direct link to the image
print()
print(data['explanation'])              # paragraph from NASA explaining the image

Type a latitude/longitude and get the current temperature. No key needed.

import requests

url = "https://api.open-meteo.com/v1/forecast?latitude=42.3&longitude=-122.9¤t_weather=true"
data = requests.get(url).json()
print(f"Temperature: {data['current_weather']['temperature']} °C")

Ask icanhazdadjoke.com for a random joke.

import requests

headers = {"Accept": "application/json"}   # ask the API for JSON, not a web page
data = requests.get("https://icanhazdadjoke.com/", headers=headers).json()
print(data["joke"])

Ask the Bored API for something to do when you can't think of anything.

import requests

data = requests.get("https://bored-api.appbrewery.com/random").json()
print("You could:", data["activity"])

Sister site to the bookstore: quotes.toscrape.com. Scrape each quote and its author with BeautifulSoup (same pattern as Track A).

Pull questions from the Open Trivia DB, ask the user each one, and keep score with a loop and an if — ties right back to Day 1.

Let the user pick a coin and print its live price from the free CoinGecko API.

import requests

coin = input("Coin id (e.g. bitcoin, ethereum, dogecoin): ")
url  = f"https://api.coingecko.com/api/v3/simple/price?ids={coin}&vs_currencies=usd"
data = requests.get(url).json()
print(f"{coin} = ${data[coin]['usd']}")

Combine two sources into one program — e.g. look up a city's weather and a random activity, then suggest an indoor or outdoor plan based on the temperature.

Loop through all pages of the bookstore or quotes site, collect every item into a list, and save it to a CSV with Python's built-in csv module. You'll open it in Day 3.