Python - regex matching in HTML Body

Question

I need to parse the Device Time (i.e. 2012-01-17 13:12:09) in below text by using python. Could you please tell me how I can do this using the standard regular expression library in python? Thanks.

  <html><head><style type="text/css">h1 {color:blue;}h2 {color:red;}</style>
  <h1>Device #1   Root Content</h1><h2>Device Addr: 127.0.0.1:8080</h1>
  <h2>Device Time: 2012-01-17 13:12:09</h2></body></html>

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454 — , Jan 17 '12 at 12:48
The above of text is an extract from a valid html page. Please ignore the invalidity. — F. Aydemir, Jan 17 '12 at 12:53
I think his context is proper. He is extracting Device time which seems perfect regular. — Shiplu Mokaddim, Jan 17 '12 at 12:57

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 17 '12 at 14:18

2

Just to add

import re
pattern = re.compile(r'(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2} \d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2})')
first_match = pattern.search(html)

edited Jan 17 '12 at 14:18

Tim Pietzcker

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answered Jan 17 '12 at 12:53

Shadow

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Although it happens to work here, it's better to use a raw string for regexes. I've edited your answer accordingly. If you get used to this convention, you can avoid a lot of grief later (for example, when your regex contains `\b`). – Tim Pietzcker Jan 17 '12 at 14:20

Shiplu Mokaddim · Answer 2 · 2012-01-17T14:57:12.837

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You need this regex.

/Device Time: (\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2} \d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2})/

or this,

/Device Time: (\d\d\d\d-\d\d-\d\d \d\d:\d\d:\d\d)/

Use this regular expression with global switch on.

edited Jan 17 '12 at 14:57

answered Jan 17 '12 at 12:49

Shiplu Mokaddim

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The content printed is none when I do this. Any suggestion? Thanks. – F. Aydemir Jan 17 '12 at 12:58
Probably because of `/.../gi` delimiters/modifiers which don't work this way in Python. – Tim Pietzcker Jan 17 '12 at 14:18
I am not a python expert so tried to provide standard regex. Fixed it now. – Shiplu Mokaddim Jan 17 '12 at 14:56

bw_üezi · Answer 3 · 2012-01-17T12:57:58.117

Try this regex

Device Time: ([^<]+)

this will just return the remaining rest after the words "Device Time: " till the next html tag starts. As shown in an other answer you could also search for a more specific format of this date time.

In general it's considered bad practice to parse html files with regex. However you're example is more like parsing some normal text which happens to be part of html file... In this case that's kind of fine... ;-)

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 17 '12 at 12:57

1

Maybe like this: import re

str = """ Your HTML String here"""

pattern = re.compile(r"""Device Time:([ \d\-:]*)""")
s = pattern.search(str)

time = s.group(1)

answered Jan 17 '12 at 12:57

xueyumusic

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How about parsing the time excluding the date? (e.g. 14:00:51) Thanks. – F. Aydemir Jan 17 '12 at 13:02
may be add: day_time = time.strip().split(' ')[1] – xueyumusic Jan 17 '12 at 13:14
The following does everything: pattern = re.compile(r"""Device Time:([ \d\-:]*)""") s = pattern.search(str) time = (s.group(1)).strip() print time pattern = re.compile('(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2})') s = pattern.search(time) date_ = s.group(1) print date_ pattern = re.compile('(\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2})') s = pattern.search(time) hour = s.group(1) print hour – F. Aydemir Jan 17 '12 at 13:16

Python - regex matching in HTML Body

4 Answers4