[Captain M]

I'm trying to get an <f6> tag's contents from a web page. I've found code that will the the contents of a hyperlink (<a href>) tag, but I can't figure out how to modify it correctly. This is the code I'm working with:

import sgmllib

class MyParser(sgmllib.SGMLParser):
    "A simple parser class."

    def parse(self, s):
        "Parse the given string 's'."
        self.feed(s)
        self.close()

    def __init__(self, verbose=0):
        "Initialise an object, passing 'verbose' to the superclass."

        sgmllib.SGMLParser.__init__(self, verbose)
        self.hyperlinks = []

    def start_a(self, attributes):
        "Process a hyperlink and its 'attributes'."

        for name, value in attributes:
            if name == "href":
                self.hyperlinks.append(value)

    def get_hyperlinks(self):
        "Return the list of hyperlinks."

        return self.hyperlinks

import urllib, sgmllib

# Get something to work with.
f = urllib.urlopen("http://www.waylink-english.co.uk/?page=11620&pw=1)
s = f.read()

# Try and process the page.
# The class should have been defined first, remember.
myparser = MyParser()
myparser.parse(s)

# Get the hyperlinks.
print myparser.get_hyperlinks()

The code is looking for href as an attribute of <a>, but I don't see where it specifies a as the tag to use. As the tag I'm looking for (f6) has no attributes, I just want to get the contents of all f6 tags. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[JackOfAllTrades]

You might try using Beautiful Soup instead. It's built for this sort of thing.

[Captain M]

Thanks a lot. I'm at work, but I'll look at it tonight. It looks perfect for what I need.

[LinuxFan]

Alternatively, if you do not wish to use soup,
just change the start_a(self, attributes) function.

For example, if you want to parse image links and get the image urls, use:

#Change 'img' in 'start_img' to the HTML tag you need
def start_img(self, attributes):
    "Process a hyperlink and its 'attributes'."

    for name, value in attributes:
        if name == "src": #Change "src" to the attribute you need
            self.hyperlinks.append(value)

Now, I'm not sure what other html tags happen to work, I've only experimented with sgmllib for a short period, but other html tags most likely work in the same fashon

Hope I helped!

[Captain M]

The problem is that I'm trying to get a custom tag <f6> and it has no attributes. I just want to get the contents of every f6 tag, and output it to a txt file.

[LinuxFan]

Aaah, I'm sorry - I didn't fully read the bottom of the post. Besides, start_a should be changed to 'def unknown_starttag(self, tag, attributes):' and check for tag=='f6', but that's beside the point.

Anyway, sorry for the misinformation

[Captain M]

No, you're good. That was helpful. Thanks!