CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonhtmlhtml-parsinglxmllxml.html
Frank
Frank

Reputation: 99

How to parse a htmlpage with lxml with <br /> screwing up?

I want to parse the following piece of html from Nasa's website with lxml in python:

    <p>
        <strong>Launch Date:</strong>1981-09-24<br/>
        <strong>Launch Vehicle:</strong> Delta<br/>
        <strong>Launch Site:</strong> Cape Canaveral, United States<br/>
        <strong>Mass:</strong> 550.0 kg<br/>
    </p>

Using the following code of python3: 

from lxml.html import parse

page = parse("http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1981-096A")

rows = page.xpath('//div[@class="urtwo"]/p')[0]
for element in rows:
    print(element.xpath("string()"))

But the values after the heads are empty...:

Launch Date:

Launch Vehicle:

Launch Site:

Mass:

I think it has to do something with <'/strong> or <'br />.

Can anyone help me to find the solution?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 100

Answers (1)

alecxe
alecxe

Reputation: 474191

How about iterating over strong tags thinking about them as labels and getting the following text siblings as values:

rows = page.xpath('//div[@class="urtwo"]/p//strong')
for element in rows:
    label = element.text.strip()
    value = element.xpath("following-sibling::text()")[0].strip()

    print(label, value)

Prints:

('Launch Date:', u'1981-09-24')
(u'Launch\xa0Vehicle:', u'Delta')
(u'Launch\xa0Site:', u'Cape Canaveral, United States')
('Mass:', u'550.0\xa0kg')

Upvotes: 1

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