How to parse a HTML file with table using Python

Question

I have got a html file with table ( its a large one, so only sample code is given ). I want to retrieve the values in tables. I tried the HTMLParser library from python.

I started coding like below. Then I found that the attribute "class" is same as system defined keyword. So its giving me error.

class MyHTMLParser(HTMLParser):

    def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
        if tag == 'tr':
            for class in attrs:
                if class == 'Table_row'

p = MyHTMLParser()
p.feed(ht)

HTML code for table

<table class="Table_rows" cellspacing="0" rules="all" border="1" id="MyDataGrid" style="width:700px;border-collapse:collapse;">

                    <tr class="Table_Heading">

                        <td>STATION CODE</td><td>STATION NAME</td><td>SCHEDULED ARRIVAL</td><td>SCHEDULED DEPARTURE</td><td>ACTUAL/ EXPECTED ARRIVAL</td><td>ACTUAL/ EXPECTED DEPARTURE</td>

                    </tr><tr class="Table_row">

                        <td>TVC </td><td style="width:160px;">ORIGON</td><td>Starting Station </td><td>05:00, 07 May 2011</td><td>Starting Station</td><td>05:00, 07 May 2011</td>

                    </tr><tr class="alternat_table_row">

                        <td>TVP </td><td>NEY YORK</td><td>05:04, 07 May 2011</td><td>05:05, 07 May 2011</td><td>05:04, 07 May 2011</td><td>05:05, 07 May 2011</td>

</tr>               
</table>

UPDATE

How could I get data between the tags?

I wrote a small and simple HTML table parser not requiring any external module: github.com/schmijos/html-table-parser-python3/blob/master/… — schmijos
– schmijos, Commented Dec 9, 2014 at 9:42

Eli Bendersky · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-07 11:40:20Z

4

Note that the documentation of the handle_starttag method states:

The tag argument is the name of the tag converted to lower case. The attrs argument is a list of (name, value) pairs containing the attributes found inside the tag’s <> brackets.

So, you're probably looking for something like:

from HTMLParser import HTMLParser

class MyHTMLParser(HTMLParser):
    def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
        if tag == 'tr':
            for name, value in attrs:
                if name == 'class':
                    print 'Found class', value

p = MyHTMLParser()
p.feed(ht)

Prints:

Found class Table_Heading
Found class Table_row
Found class alternat_table_row

P.S. I also recommend BeautifulSoup for parsing HTML with Python.

answered May 7, 2011 at 11:40

Eli Bendersky

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6 Comments

user567879 Over a year ago

How to print the values like STATION CODE STATION NAME ORIGON ...?

Eli Bendersky Over a year ago

@user567879: you can find td tags and process them

user567879 Over a year ago

Sorry for the dumb question. What I want is that I need to process ( couldnt find a method to print the value b/w tags) td tag between the table tag. How to handle that nesting?

Eli Bendersky Over a year ago

@user567879: not sure what you're asking exactly... Still I recommend to take a look at BeautifulSoup - it provides a much higher-level API for HTML processing. HTMLParser is quite awkward to use compared to it

user567879 Over a year ago

I want to print the data in tr tag when class=Table_Heading or class=Table_row or class=alternate_table_row only. Can I use and cluause to make it work?

|

snippsat · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-07 14:43:45Z

How to print the values like STATION CODE STATION NAME ORIGON ...?.

You can do it like this with BeautifulSoup.

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

html = '''\
<td>STATION CODE</td><td>STATION NAME</td><td>SCHEDULED ARRIVAL</td><td>SCHEDULED DEPARTURE</td><td>ACTUAL/ EXPECTED ARRIVAL</td><td>ACTUAL/ EXPECTED DEPARTURE</td>
</tr><tr class="Table_row">
<td>TVC </td><td style="width:160px;">ORIGON</td><td>Starting Station </td><td>05:00, 07 May 2011</td><td>Starting Station</td><td>05:00, 07 May 2011</td>
'''

soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
tag = soup.findAll('td', limit=2)
tag_O = soup.findAll('td')[7]

for i in range(len(tag)):
    print tag[i].string
print tag_O.string

'''Output-->
STATION CODE
STATION NAME
ORIGON
'''

AgileVortex · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-07 11:08:39Z

1

I would highly recommend using the BeautifulSoup library. It handles even broken HTML with ease.

http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/

answered May 7, 2011 at 11:08

AgileVortex

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