Python HTMLParser - extract "empty" data between two tags

Question

class MyHTMLParser(HTMLParser):

    b1 = False

    def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
        if tag =="ul":
            self.b1 = True

    def handle_data(self, data):
        if self.b1:
            print(data)
            self.b1 = False

parser = MyHTMLParser()

parser.feed('<ul class="player-metadata floatleft"></ul><p>Gros caca</p><p>Zuul</p>')

I want to extract the data between <ul class="player-metadata floatleft"> and </ul> which is empty. However, even though I flagged the <ul> tag, the handle_data function prints the first data found after <ul class="player-metadata floatleft"></ul>:

"Gros caca"

I would like to print "nothing" and that len(data) returns 0.

Could you please help me? I am also not allowed to use BeautifulSoup.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:07:17Z

3

This is pretty much a duplicate of this question.

The idea is to hold on to the start tag and the enclosed data whenever a tag is processed, then using these to do things when the parser handles the end tag, like so:

class MyHTMLParser(HTMLParser):
    _data = ''
    _starttag = ''

    def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
        self._starttag = tag

    def handle_data(self, data):
        self._data = data

    def handle_endtag(self, tag):
        if self._starttag == 'ul' and self._data == '':
            print('nothing')
        elif (...):
            (...)
        else:
            print(self._data)

This will handle empty strings and return 0 for len(self._data).

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:07

CommunityBot

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answered May 16, 2015 at 13:07

Michael Blakeley

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3 Comments

connie246 Over a year ago

Thank you very much. I wish I could upvote your answer! Also I believe you meant print(self._data) for the last line.

Michael Blakeley Over a year ago

Yeah, but you get the gist. ;) Glad I could help.

Michael Blakeley Over a year ago

I believe you can accept the answer even with a low score, which will remove the unanswered tag from the question.

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