Optimize python if statement

Question

What is a more pythonic way to write this statement?

if soup.find(title="Email"):
    profile['email'] = soup.find(title="Email").a.string

What I want to avoid is the repetition of soup.find(title="Email")

Then extract it to a variable; this is not a Python issue, it's the same for pretty much every language going. — jonrsharpe
– jonrsharpe, Commented Jun 4, 2016 at 17:01

Kirthi Samson · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-04 17:26:20Z

3

I do not know if this is more pythonic. I do this with most languages I use. On the top of my head, something like this should avoid the repetition.

soupByEmail = soup.find(title="Email")
if soupByEmail:
    profile['email'] = soupByEmail.a.string

edited Jun 4, 2016 at 17:26

answered Jun 4, 2016 at 17:04

Kirthi Samson

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2 Comments

Alex Hall Over a year ago

You used two ifs and even if you didn't it wouldn't be valid. You're thinking of Ruby.

Kirthi Samson Over a year ago

@AlexHall Ah yes, this only works if there is an else condition as well. profile['email'] = soupByEmail.a.string if soupByEmail else " " Will edit.

Kasravnd · Accepted Answer · 2016-06-04 17:05:57Z

0

It's not a matter of pythonic it's more about coding style. And as an elegant alternative you use EAFP principle (Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission) and wrap your snippet with a try-except expression:

try:
    profile['email'] = soup.find(title="Email").a.string
except Exception as exp:
    # do what you want with exp

Another advantage of this approach is that you can log the issues in your exception block, for later use, or print then in stdout.

answered Jun 4, 2016 at 17:05

Kasravnd

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3 Comments

chepner Over a year ago

The original code specifically distinguished between find returning a valid object with the appropriate a attribute and (presumably) None. You can do the same here by catching AttributeError, not Exception.

Kasravnd Over a year ago

@chepner Maybe, but since there would be a lot of exception in that line, I can't rely on what I'm not sure about 100%, also OP doesn't explained the code completely.

Kevin Over a year ago

"Optimizing" generally means the OP is asking for code that does the same thing as their code, and this does not meet that requirement.

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