CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonseleniumbeautifulsoupmechanicalsoup
Michael Smith
Michael Smith

Reputation: 29

Can I use MechanicalSoup to check an un-named checkbox?

MechanicalSoup's tutorial shows you how to do things with named input boxes, but not everyone who writes html takes care with naming. I have an html page with a single form containing an un-named checkbox (which when you check it, checks all the others) plus a large number of other checkboxes all named 'alpkey'. Can anyone help me select the first checkbox, or alternatively, find and select all the checkboxes in the page? I need to do this and then follow the link in the 'More info' button. The html code goes like this:

<p></p>
<form name="summform" target="_blank" action="/cgi-bin/RBG" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="form" value="PNG/png2">
<center>

<table width="850" frame="below">
<tr><td><div>39 matches found</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><i>Select the records you wish to see more information on</i> <b>:</b>
<br>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><input type="checkbox" onclick="if(this.checked){checkAll(true)}else{checkAll(false)}">

<b>Select ALL/None</b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<input type="submit" value="More Info">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Click on thumbnail to see larger image.
</td></tr>
</table>
<table width="850" frame="below">
<tr>
<td></td>
<td width="50" align="center"><b>LAE No.</b></td>
<td align="center"><b>Summary of record</b></td>
<td align="center"><b>Specimen Images</b></td>
<tr>
<td><input type="checkbox" name="alpkey" value="83237" /></td>
<td width="50" align="center"></td>
<td align="left">
<b><font color="#FFCC33">

....and so on. Or do I need Selenium?

Update: the code below code works (or seems to - browser.launch_browser() doesn’t work unless I use StatefulBrowser, so I can’t visually inspect the results)...but I can’t get any further. I can’t work out how to follow the ‘submit’ button link.

browser = mechanicalsoup.Browser()
page = browser.get(myurl)
soup = page.soup
form = soup.select("form")[0]
for i in range(3, len(form.select("input"))):
    form.select("input")[i].checked = 'checked'
    # print(form.select("input")[i].checked)
submit = soup.findAll(type='submit')
#form2 = soup.select_form()
#form2.choose_submit('More Info')
#page2 = browser.submit(form, page.url)

....alternatively, it seems that when I use browser = mechanicalsoup.StatefulBrowser() I’m unable to loop through the checkboxes.

Upvotes: -1

Views: 332

Answers (1)

Michael Smith
Michael Smith

Reputation: 29

This worked - to loop through a load of checkboxes, all with the same name but different 'checked' attributes (indicated in the html as e.g. value="83237"), check them all (by setting the appropriate value) and finally submit the form:

browser = mechanicalsoup.StatefulBrowser()
browser.open(myurl) # having set URL variable
browser.select_form('form[name="summform"]') # only one form on page, this was its name
check = browser.page.find_all('input')
rangeval = len(check)-2 # to loop through checkboxes, ignoring a couple of other input tags
names = []
for i in range(3, rangeval):
    names.append(check[i]['value']) # get list of values to set
browser["alpkey"] = names # all checkboxes have the same name so use list
browser.launch_browser() # verify that they're all checked
response = browser.submit_selected() # and submit form
print(response.url)
print(response.text)

...it would've been nicer to just check the 'check all' box, but that was unnamed and had no 'value' attribute.

Upvotes: 0

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