Can I use Go's 'net/http' package for web scraping?

Yes, you can certainly use Go's net/http package for web scraping. The net/http package in Go provides HTTP client and server implementations and is quite capable of handling the tasks required for web scraping, such as sending requests and receiving responses.

Here's a simple example of how you could use Go's net/http package to perform web scraping:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "io/ioutil"
    "log"
    "net/http"
)

func main() {
    // Define the URL you want to scrape
    url := "http://example.com"

    // Send a GET request to the URL
    response, err := http.Get(url)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    defer response.Body.Close()

    // Check that the server response is OK
    if response.StatusCode != http.StatusOK {
        log.Fatalf("Status error: %v", response.StatusCode)
    }

    // Read the body of the response
    body, err := ioutil.ReadAll(response.Body)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    // Convert the body to a string (assuming it's text-based like HTML)
    data := string(body)

    fmt.Println(data)

    // At this point you could use a package like "golang.org/x/net/html" to parse the HTML.
    // Or you could use regular expressions to extract the data you're interested in.
}

Keep in mind that this is a very basic example. For more complex tasks, such as handling JavaScript-heavy websites or managing sessions and cookies, you may need additional tools or packages. For example, to parse and traverse the HTML you've scraped, you might want to use a package like github.com/PuerkitoBio/goquery, which provides jQuery-like functionality for HTML documents.

Here's an example of how you could use goquery in combination with net/http for web scraping:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "log"
    "net/http"

    "github.com/PuerkitoBio/goquery"
)

func main() {
    // Define the URL you want to scrape
    url := "http://example.com"

    // Send a GET request to the URL
    response, err := http.Get(url)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
    defer response.Body.Close()

    // Check that the server response is OK
    if response.StatusCode != http.StatusOK {
        log.Fatalf("Status error: %v", response.StatusCode)
    }

    // Parse the body of the response with goquery
    doc, err := goquery.NewDocumentFromReader(response.Body)
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

    // Use goquery to find specific elements, for example, all anchors
    doc.Find("a").Each(func(index int, item *goquery.Selection) {
        href, _ := item.Attr("href")
        text := item.Text()
        fmt.Printf("Link #%d: '%s' - %s\n", index, text, href)
    })
}

When using Go for web scraping, make sure to respect the website's robots.txt file and terms of service. Additionally, it's good practice to identify your web scraper by setting a custom User-Agent in your HTTP requests. Always scrape responsibly and ethically.