How can I get data from a specific cell in an HTML table in python?

Question

This link contains the table I'm trying to parse. I'm trying to use BeautifulSoup in Python. I'm very new to BeautifulSoup and HTML. This is my attempt to solve my problem.

soup = BeautifulSoup(open('BBS_student_grads.php'))

data = []
table = soup.find('table')
rows = table.find_all('tr') #array of rows in table 

for x,row in enumerate(rows[1:]):# skips first row 
    cols = row.find_all('td')    # finds all cols in rows
    for y,col in enumerate(cols): # iterates through col
        data.append([])
        data[x].append(col)       # puts table into a 2d array called data

print(data[0][0])                 #prints top left corner

Sample Output

I'm trying to extract all the names in the table, then update the names in the list and then update the table. I'm also using a local copy of this HTML. Temporary fix till I learn how to do more web programming.

help is much appreciated

alecxe · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-07 04:58:29Z

1

I think you need just the td elements in the tr element with class="searchbox_black".

You can use CSS Selectors to get to the desired td elements:

for cell in soup.select('tr.searchbox_black td'):
    print cell.text

It prints:

BB Salsa

 Adams State University Alamosa, CO               
              Sensei: Oneyda Maestas               
              Raymond Breitstein               

...

answered Mar 7, 2015 at 4:58

alecxe

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5 Comments

MultiPurposeEraser Over a year ago

for some reason when you go further down when it starts printing spaces between every character. Actual output: "Rebecca Ha l l b r > "

alecxe Over a year ago

@thor sorry, cannot reproduce it, what is your current code? Thanks.

MultiPurposeEraser Over a year ago

soup = BeautifulSoup(open('BBS_student_grads.php'))     data = [] for cell in soup.select('tr.searchbox_black td'):                           data.append(cell)  print(data[0])

@alecxe

alecxe Over a year ago

@thor did you mean data.append(cell.text) instead?

MultiPurposeEraser Over a year ago

cell.text does output just the text but it still does some odd formatting around "Rebecca Hall". python puts 3 space around every character

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