Parsing html using BeautifulSoup in Python

Question

I wrote some code to parse html, but the result was not what I wanted:

import urllib2
html = urllib2.urlopen('http://dummy').read()
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
for definition in soup.findAll('span', {"class":'d'}):
definition = definition.renderContents()
print "<meaning>", definition
for exampleofuse in soup.find('span',{"class":'x'}):
    print "<exampleofuse>", exampleofuse, "<exampleofuse>"
print "<meaning>"

Is there any kind of way that when class attribute is "d" or "x" to then get the string?

The following html code is what I want to parse:

<span class="d">calculated by adding several amounts together</span>
<span class="x">an average rate</span>
<span class="x">at an average speed of 100 km/h</span>
<span class="d">typical or normal</span>
<span class="x">average intelligence</span>
<span class="x">20 pounds for dinner is average</span>

Then, this is the result I want:

<definition>calculated by adding several amounts together
    <example_of_use>an average rate</example_of_use>
    <example_of_use>at an average speed of 100 km/h</example_of_use>
</definition>
<definition>typical or normal
    <example_of_use>average intelligence</example_of_use>
    <example_of_use>20 pounds for dinner is average</example_of_use>
</definition>

rolling stone · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-18 15:18:00Z

5

yes, you can get all of the spans in the html, then for each check for a class of "d" or "x", and if they do, print them.

something like this might work (untested):

for span in soup.findAll('span'):
    if span.find("span","d").string:
        print "<definition>" + span.find("span","d").string + "</definition>"
    elif span.find("span","x").string:
        print "<example>" + span.find("span","x").string + "</example>"

answered Jun 18, 2011 at 15:18

rolling stone

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