Parse local HTML python (lxml)

Question

I'm trying to parse a local HTML with lxml, but I'm getting an error, but I don't know why (sorry in advance for the bad code, I'm new to this).

from lxml import etree, html
from StringIO import StringIO

parser = etree.HTMLParser()
doc = etree.parse(StringIO("test1.html"), parser)
tree = html.fromstring(doc)
CCE = tree.xpath('//div[@data-reactid]/div[@class="browse-summary"]/h1')
URL = tree.xpath('//a[@class="rc-OfferingCard"]/@href')

print 'CCE:', CCE
print 'URL:', URL

And here's the error:

  File "test.py", line 8, in <module>
tree = html.fromstring(doc)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/lxml/html/__init__.py", line 703, in fromstring
is_full_html = _looks_like_full_html_unicode(html)
TypeError: expected string or buffer

I think your html is not valid, make sure `test1.html` is valid using https://validator.w3.org/ — Learner, Jan 25 '16 at 11:30
`StringIO` is use to treats text in variable as open file - not to load file. — furas, Jan 25 '16 at 11:32
`html.fromstring` wants a string. You feed it the result of `etree.parse` (not a string). — Boldewyn, Jan 25 '16 at 11:34
Thanks, there are some little errors in attributes and elements, in fact — Lara M., Jan 25 '16 at 11:34

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 25 '16 at 11:35

7

I think you need

tree = etree.parse("text1.html", parser)

without StringIO and fromstring

answered Jan 25 '16 at 11:35

furas

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YES! It works perfectly! Thank you, I cannot give a feedback for your answer due to my low reputation, but it works fine!! – Lara M. Jan 25 '16 at 12:48

Parse local HTML python (lxml)

1 Answers1