CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonhtmlbeautifulsouphtml-parsing
user3440716
user3440716

Reputation: 649

python how to extract text after br?

I am using 2.7.8 and gone bit surprise bcz i am getting all text but the text containing after last <"br"> is not getting. Like my html page:

<html>
<body>
<div class="entry-content" >
<p>Here is a listing of C interview questions on “Variable Names” along with answers, explanations and/or solutions:
</p>

<p>Which of the following is not a valid C variable name?<br>
a) int number;<br>
b) float rate;<br>
c) int variable_count;<br>
d) int $main;</p>   <!--not getting-->

<p> more </p>

<p>Which of the following is true for variable names in C?<br>
a) They can contain alphanumeric characters as well as special characters<br>
b) It is not an error to declare a variable to be one of the keywords(like goto, static)<br>
c) Variable names cannot start with a digit<br>
d) Variable can be of any length</p> <!--not getting -->!

</div>
</body>
</html>

and my code:

url = "http://www.sanfoundry.com/c-programming-questions-answers-variable-names-1/"
#url="http://www.sanfoundry.com/c-programming-questions-answers-variable-names-2/"
req = Request(url)
resp = urllib2.urlopen(req)
htmls = resp.read()
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(htmls)
for br in soup.findAll('br'):
    next = br.nextSibling
    if not (next and isinstance(next,NavigableString)):
        continue
    next2 = next.nextSibling
    if next2 and isinstance(next2,Tag) and next2.name == 'br':
        text = str(next).strip()
        if text:
            print "Found:", next.encode('utf-8')
           # print '...........sfsdsds.............',answ[0].encode('utf-8')   #

Output:

Found: 
a) int number;
Found: 
b) float rate;
Found: 
c) int variable_count;

Found: 
a) They can contain alphanumeric characters as well as special characters
Found: 
b) It is not an error to declare a variable to be one of the keywords(like goto, static)
Found: 
c) Variable names cannot start with a digit

However i am not getting last "text" which is for example: 

 d) int $main
    and 
 d) Variable can be of any length

which is after <"br">

And the output i am trying to get :

Found: 
a) int number;
Found: 
b) float rate;
Found: 
c) int variable_count;
Found:
d) int $main

Found: 
a) They can contain alphanumeric characters as well as special characters
Found: 
b) It is not an error to declare a variable to be one of the keywords(like goto, static)
Found: 
c) Variable names cannot start with a digit
d) Variable can be of any length

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3055

Answers (2)

Serge Ballesta
Serge Ballesta

Reputation: 149165

This is because BeautifulSoup forces the text into valid xml by closing <br> tags just before the </p>. The prettified version is clear about it:

<p>
 Which of the following is not a valid C variable name?
 <br>
  a) int number;
  <br>
   b) float rate;
   <br>
    c) int variable_count;
    <br>
     d) int $main;
    </br>
   </br>
  </br>
 </br>
</p>

So the text d) int $main; is not a sibling of last <br> tag, but is the text of this tag.

Code could be (here):

...
soup = BeautifulSoup(htmls)
for br in soup.findAll('br'):
    if len(br.contents) > 0:  # avoid errors if a tag is correctly closed as <br/>
        print 'Found', br.contents[0]

It gives as expected:

Found 
a) int number;
Found 
b) float rate;
Found 
c) int variable_count;
Found 
d) int $main;
Found 
a) They can contain alphanumeric characters as well as special characters
Found 
b) It is not an error to declare a variable to be one of the keywords(like goto, static)
Found 
c) Variable names cannot start with a digit
Found 
d) Variable can be of any length

Upvotes: 1

Valkyrie
Valkyrie

Reputation: 861

You could use Requests instead of urllib2, and extract xml via lxml's html module.

from lxml import html
import requests

#request page
page=requests.get("http://www.sanfoundry.com/c-programming-questions-answers-variable-names-1/")

#get content in html format
page_content=html.fromstring(page.content)

#recover all text from <p> elements
items=page_content.xpath('//p/text()')

the above code returns an array of all text in the document contained in <a> elements.
With that, you can simply index into the array to print what you want.

Upvotes: 1

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