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So I'm doing this project, a little search engine. On the following function I try to build an Index and a Database from the content of a website. ( Index being a dictionary with index[word] = [url] , so for each word, a list of urls where it appears. And the db is a dictionary where db[url] = [(title , score)] where for each url found, its title and a score that is pregiven.

Now, I have the AttributeError 'str' object has no attribute 'append' in add_to_index function. (I attach the get_content function as well from which add_to_index is called. Here I attach the code, if someone could help! Thank you!

def get_content( url , soup , index , db):
 title = soup.title.text.strip()
 head = soup.head.text.strip()
 body = soup.body.text.strip()
 p = soup.find_all('p')
 h1 = soup.find_all('h1')
 h2 = soup.find_all('h2')
 h3 = soup.find_all('h3')

 #Introduce all of what we have got
 add_to_index( index , db, url , title , 1 )
 add_to_index( index , db, url , head , 2 )
 add_to_index( index , db, url , body , 3 )
 add_to_index( index , db, url , p , 4 )
 add_to_index( index , db, url , h1 , 4 )
 add_to_index( index , db, url , h2 , 4)
 add_to_index( index , db, url , h3 , 4)

def add_to_index( index , db , url ,  section , score ):
    for word in section:
        if word in index:
            index[word].append(url)
        else:
            index[word] = ( url )
            if word == title and not url in db:
                db[url] = ( title , score )
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    Well, it's true, str has no append. The question is, what are you surprised about? Did you not think that index[word[0]] was a string? Did you think strings could be mutated in-place with methods like append? Or something different? Or, to put it a different way, what did you want that line index[word[0]].append(url) to do? Commented Jun 9, 2018 at 0:33
  • I would like to find a solution for it, another method maybe, so that I can add some more urls to the entry word of index! Commented Jun 9, 2018 at 0:38

1 Answer 1

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This line that creates the initial value of index[word] is setting it to a string:

        index[word] = ( url )

You should set it to a list:

        index[word] = [ url ]

Then you can append to it.

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3 Comments

Great, thanks! Do you know why word = characters instead of words? I thought .strip() would break down the text in to words.
strip() just removes any surrounding whitespace, why would it break it into words? You're thinking of .split()
Perfect! Thank you!!!

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