Detect image src from html using python and regular expressions?

Question

I want to detect the src attribute of a image from the img tag from html code using python. I think regular expressions can do the job. And I created a regular expression

\<img .*src="(.*)".*/\>

But there are many possible ways to use img tag such as

<img src="images/first.png" alt="" />
<img src="images/first.png" alt="">
<img  alt="" src="images/first.png" />
<img  alt="" width="100" src="images/first.png" height="200">

So my question is, Is the above regular expression enough for the task ? Can any one give a better option ?

[You cannot parse HTML with regex](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/395760). — , Nov 01 '12 at 16:09
`Can any one give a better option` - yes, use `lmxl.html` or `bs4` - but then according to a comment - `I cant use any other libraries in this project` ... — Jon Clements, Nov 01 '12 at 16:12
@MuhammedKK: Sorry, we don't usually help people to shoot themselves in the foot. Regular expressions are *the wrong tool* for this job. — Martijn Pieters, Nov 01 '12 at 16:23

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 01 '12 at 16:12

Use a HTML parser instead, Python has several to choose from:

ElementTree is part of the standard library
BeautifulSoup is a popular 3rd party library
lxml is a fast and feature-rich C-based library.

ElementTree example:

from xml.etree import ElementTree

tree = ElementTree.parse('filename.html')
for elem in tree.findall('img'):
    print elem['src']

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 01 '12 at 16:06

0

You can use a beautiful library BeautifulSoup

answered Nov 01 '12 at 16:06

user1305989

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I cant use any other libraries in this project. – Muhammed K K Nov 01 '12 at 16:09
@MuhammedKK Then you cannot solve this problem well. I wonder why though? – Nov 01 '12 at 16:13

Detect image src from html using python and regular expressions?

2 Answers2