Extracting information

Question

I want to extract myinformation_1 and myinformation_2 from the list below.

My code is not working yet.

Can you please help?

Thank you,HHC

import re
start = re.escape(">")
end   = re.escape("<")
stringlist =['<div class="ant-space-item"><a href="/holdings-of-1">myinformation_1</a></div>', 
    '<div class="ant-space-item"><a href="/holdings-of-2avbf">myinformation_2</a></div>']
for i in stringlist :
    result = re.search('%s(.*)%s' % (start, end), i).group(1)
    print(result)

See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags — kaya3, Oct 29 '21 at 03:16

rv.kvetch · Answer 1 · 2021-10-29T04:20:45.420

1

Try with a more specific regex, e.g. <a href="/holdings-of-[^"]+">([^<]*) in this case:

import re

stringlist =['<div class="ant-space-item"><a href="/holdings-of-1">myinformation_1</a></div>',
    '<div class="ant-space-item"><a href="/holdings-of-2adf">myinformation_2</a></div>']

for i in stringlist:
    result = re.search(r'<a href="/holdings-of-[^"]+">([^<]*)', i).group(1)
    print(result)

Output:

myinformation_1
myinformation_2

Or as suggested in the comments, you can use a more "generalized" expression that works for any <a> tag, such as a regex like <a.*?>([^<]*).

edited Oct 29 '21 at 04:20

answered Oct 29 '21 at 03:17

rv.kvetch

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Or, to be even more general, just `r'([^<]*) – Green Cloak Guy Oct 29 '21 at 03:18
Yep, a good point. I was trying to aim for specific, but that's a good generalization to use too. – rv.kvetch Oct 29 '21 at 03:21
1

This one is easier for newbee to read. (r'([^<]*). What if the start is not end with number but myinformation_1? – Hary2 Oct 29 '21 at 03:24
@Hary2 hmm, in that case you can use `\w` instead of `\d`, which will match either numbers or letters. I updated the solution above. – rv.kvetch Oct 29 '21 at 03:32
actually, I just realized there's an even better (likely also faster) solution. We can just match `[^"]` or any character other than a quote `"`, which terminates the href value. – rv.kvetch Oct 29 '21 at 04:22

Extracting information

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