Extracting Multiple Elements with same html criteria in python

Question

I'm novice with python and beautiful so this answer may be obvious.

I'm using beautiful soup to parse the following html and extract the Date.

html='''
<p><strong>Event:</strong>Meeting</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 11 am</p>
<p><strong>Price:</strong>$20.00</p>

<p><strong>Event:</strong>Convention</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Mon, May 2, 2016, 11 am</p>
<p><strong>Price:</strong>$25.00</p>

<p><strong>Event:</strong>Dance</p>
<p><strong>Date:</strong> Mon, May 9, 2016, 11 am</p>
<p><strong>Price:</strong>Free</p>
'''

I parsed the date when there is only one date using the following code but having a hard time when encountering multiple dates (only gets one date).

date_raw = html.find_all('strong',string='Date:')
date = str(date_raw.p.nextSibling).strip()

Is there a way to do this in bs4 or should I use regular expressions. Any other suggestions?

Desired list output:

['Mon, Apr 25, 2016, 11 am','Mon, May 2, 2016, 11 am','Mon, May 9, 2016, 11 am']

Ed Dunn · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-11 18:58:29Z

1

I would probably iterate of every found element and append it to a list. Something like this maybe (untested):

date_list = []
date_raw = html.find_all('strong',string='Date:')

for d in date_raw:
    date = str(d.p.nextSibling).strip()
    date_list.append(date)

print date_list

answered Mar 11, 2016 at 18:58

Ed Dunn

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1 Comment

Jimmy Over a year ago

Thanks for your attempt to help. I posted the answer. I had to put in the index and iterate off of that.

Jimmy · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-11 22:43:37Z

1

Rookie mistake...fixed it:

for x in range(0,len(date_raw)):
    date_add = date_raw[x].next_sibling.strip()
    date_list.append(date_add)
    print (date_add)

answered Mar 11, 2016 at 22:43

Jimmy

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5 Comments

Trey Hunner Over a year ago

Good you spotted your error. FYI iterating over range(len(something)) is considered an anti-pattern in Python. Ed Dunn's answer with for d in date_raw is more idiomatic.

Jimmy Over a year ago

Thanks for your feedback! Could you elaborate on how this is an anti-pattern? I see it as redundant but not counter productive in terms of logic. Is it an anti-pattern because it takes extra unnecessary steps?

Jimmy Over a year ago

Trey, I reworked the code. This doesn't look right but its the only way I could get it to work. ' for x in date_raw: date_add = date_raw[date_raw.index(x)].next_sibling.strip() date_list.append(date_add)'

Jimmy Over a year ago

for x in date_raw: date_add = date_raw[date_raw.index(x)].next_sibling.strip() date_list.append(date_add)

Trey Hunner Over a year ago

I believe date_raw[date_raw.index(x)] could simply be x.

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