Extract text between specified html chunks in python

Question

I have below piece of html and need to extract only text from there between

<p>Current</p> and <p>Archive</p>

Html chunk looks like:

<p>Current</p>
<a href="some link to somewhere 1">File1</a>
<br>
<a href="some link to somewhere 2">File2</a>
<br>
<a href="some link to somewhere 3">File3</a>
<br>
<p>Archive</p>
<a href="Some another link to another file">Some another file</a>

so the desired output should looks like File1, File2, File3.

This is what I've tried so far

import re
m = re.compile('<p>Current</p>(.*?)<p>Archive</p>').search(text)

but doesn't work as expected.

Is there any simple solution how to extract text between specified chunks of html tags in python?

This question is answered here. stackoverflow.com/questions/14694482/… — Dhanya SJ
– Dhanya SJ, Commented Aug 3, 2018 at 10:39

Patrick Artner · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-03 10:48:44Z

1

If you insist upon using regex you can use it in combination with list comp like so:

chunk="""<p>Current</p>
<a href="some link to somewhere 1">File1</a>
<br>
<a href="some link to somewhere 2">File2</a>
<br>
<a href="some link to somewhere 3">File3</a>
<br>
<p>Archive</p>
<a href="Some another link to another file">Some another file</a>"""

import re 

# find all things between > and < the shorter the better  
found = re.findall(r">(.+?)<",chunk) 

# only use the stuff after "Current" before "Archive"
found[:] = found[ found.index("Current")+1:found.index("Archive")]

print(found) # python 3 syntax, remove () for python2.7

Output:

['File1', 'File2', 'File3']

answered Aug 3, 2018 at 10:48

Patrick Artner

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arunppsg · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-03 11:07:08Z

0

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup as bs


html_text = """
<p>Current</p>
<a href="some link to somewhere 1">File1</a>
<br>
<a href="some link to somewhere 2">File2</a>
<br>
<a href="some link to somewhere 3">File3</a>
<br>
<p>Archive</p>
<a href="Some another link to another file">Some another file</a>"""

a_tag = soup.find_all("a")

text = []
for i in a_tag:
   text.append(get_text())

print (text)

Output:

['File1', 'File2', 'File3', 'Some another file']

BeautifulSoup library will be very useful for parsing html files and getting text from them.

answered Aug 3, 2018 at 11:07

arunppsg

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