CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonbeautifulsoup
slysid
slysid

Reputation: 5488

BeautifulSoup example given in Python documents not working

I am trying out example given in BeautifulSoup documentation and one of the example is not giving intended result

html_doc = """
<html><head><title>The Dormouse's story</title></head>

<p class="title"><b>The Dormouse's story</b></p>

<p class="story">Once upon a time there were three little sisters; and their     names were
 <a href="http://example.com/elsie" class="sister" id="link1">Elsie</a>, 
<a href="http://example.com/lacie" class="sister" id="link2">Lacie</a> and
<a href="http://example.com/tillie" class="sister" id="link3">Tillie</a>;
<p class="story">...</p>
"""

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(html_doc)

In the example it says 

soup.find_all('b')
# [<b>The Dormouse's story</b>]

but when I try the same command I am getting error as below

>>> soup.find_all('b')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable

but soup object is not None

>>> soup

<html><head><title>The Dormouse's story</title></head>
<p class="title"><b>The Dormouse's story</b></p>
<p class="story">Once upon a time there were three little sisters; and their    
<a href="http://example.com/elsie" class="sister" id="link1">Elsie</a>,
<a href="http://example.com/lacie" class="sister" id="link2">Lacie</a> and
<a href="http://example.com/tillie" class="sister" id="link3">Tillie</a>;
<p class="story">...</p>
</html>

I am not sure why the given example is not working.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 276

Answers (1)

Martijn Pieters
Martijn Pieters

Reputation: 1121206

You are using BeautifulSoup version three, not version four.

In BeautifulSoup 3, the method is called findAll(), not find_all(). Because using an attribute that is not recognized is translated to soup.find('unrecognized_attribute'), you asked BeautifulSoup to find you the first <find_all> HTML element, which doesn't exist so None is returned.

Use BeautifulSoup 4 instead:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

where you almost certainly instead used:

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup  # version 3

You'll need to install the beautifulsoup4 project.

Demo:

>>> html_doc = """
... <html><head><title>The Dormouse's story</title></head>
... 
... <p class="title"><b>The Dormouse's story</b></p>
... 
... <p class="story">Once upon a time there were three little sisters; and their     names were
...  <a href="http://example.com/elsie" class="sister" id="link1">Elsie</a>, 
... <a href="http://example.com/lacie" class="sister" id="link2">Lacie</a> and
... <a href="http://example.com/tillie" class="sister" id="link3">Tillie</a>;
... <p class="story">...</p>
... """
>>> from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
>>> soup = BeautifulSoup(html_doc)
>>> soup.find_all('b')
[<b>The Dormouse's story</b>]
>>> from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
>>> soup = BeautifulSoup(html_doc)
>>> soup.find_all('b')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable

Upvotes: 3

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