CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpython-3.xbeautifulsoup
Proteeti Prova
Proteeti Prova

Reputation: 1169

getText() vs text() vs get_text()

I have a chunk of html extracted with bs4 as following 

<div class="a-section a-spacing-small" id="productDescription">
<!-- show up to 2 reviews by default -->
<p>Satin Smooth Universal Protective Wax Pot Collars by Satin Smooth</p>
</div>

To extract the text I was using text.strip()

output.text()

It gave me the output "TypeError: 'str' object is not callable"

While I used output.get_text() and output.getText(), I got the desired text

What are the differences between these 3? why the get_text() and getText() is giving the same output?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 5211

Answers (2)

Spartex
Spartex

Reputation: 45

By my knowledge which is very basic.

.text only gives you output in string form while getText() gives you accessibility to apply various custom arguments over the strings you want from the given object

Upvotes: 1

L3viathan
L3viathan

Reputation: 27323

They are very similar:

  • .get_text is a function that returns the text of a tag as a string
  • .text is a property that calls get_text (so it's identical, except you don't use parantheses)
  • .getText is an alias of get_text

I would use .text whenever possible, and .get_text(...) when you need to pass custom arguments (e.g. foo.get_text(strip=True, seperator='\n')).

Upvotes: 6

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