Following Links in Python: The program will use urllib to read the HTML from the data files below, extract the href= vaues from the anchor tags, scan for a tag that is in a particular position relative to the first name in the list, follow that link and repeat the process a number of times and report the last name you find.

py4e_ex_12_02

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error
import ssl
import re

ctx = ssl.create_default_context()
ctx.check_hostname = False
ctx.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE
url = "http://py4e-data.dr-chuck.net/known_by_Bryce.html"

#to repeat 7 times#
for i in range(7):
    html = urllib.request.urlopen(url, context=ctx).read()
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')
    tags = soup('a')
    count = 0
    for tag in tags:
        count = count +1
   
        #make it stop at position 3#
        if count>18:
            break
        url = tag.get('href', None)

print(url)

Probably my code almost does according to the instructions

import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error
import ssl
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

ctx = ssl.create_default_context()
ctx.check_hostname = False
ctx.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE

url = input('Enter URL -')
repeat = int(input('Enter number of repeatations: '))
position = int(input('Enter the link position: '))

#to repeat desired times
for i in range(repeat):
    html = urllib.request.urlopen(url, context=ctx).read()
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')
    tags = soup('a')
    count = 0
    for tag in tags:
        count = count +1

        #stopping at desired position
        if count>position:
            break
        url = tag.get('href', None)
        name = tag.contents[0]

print(name)

You're really awesome, thank you!!

Probably my code almost does according to the instructions

import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error
import ssl
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

ctx = ssl.create_default_context()
ctx.check_hostname = False
ctx.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE

url = input('Enter URL -')
repeat = int(input('Enter number of repeatations: '))
position = int(input('Enter the link position: '))

#to repeat desired times
for i in range(repeat):
    html = urllib.request.urlopen(url, context=ctx).read()
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')
    tags = soup('a')
    count = 0
    for tag in tags:
        count = count +1

        #stopping at desired position
        if count>position:
            break
        url = tag.get('href', None)
        name = tag.contents[0]

print(name)

This is crazy man, wonderful.
I've was wondering how to code this, but your code helped me a lot.
I understood each and every line.
Thank you.

thank you - Your code helps me also a lot to find the right finetuning issues for my code.

showing error at bs4

i got a question for the line url = tag,get ('href', None)

if i put a different value like x = tag.get ('href', None)
i get a totally different answer, do you why this is?

showing error at bs4

Can you please share your error?

i got a question for the line url = tag,get ('href', None)

if i put a different value like x = tag.get ('href', None) i get a totally different answer, do you why this is?

If you want to use any other variable name, then you have to change all 'url' to the variable name of your choice. In your case if you change only that line, that line will be inside for loop and for next iteration it can not fetch reference from previous url. for better understanding please check the first line inside the for loop once.

@supriyoss
why the code always show the trackback like" line 16, in , soup=BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')?
thank you

@Blake8296 It can be a variety of things, check your import, installed parser and if possible post the whole error line here, I'll be happy to help.

I am getting this error

File "bs4/element.py", line 1565, in _normalize_search_value
if (isinstance(value, str) or isinstance(value, collections.Callable) or hasattr(value, 'match')
AttributeError: module 'collections' has no attribute 'Callable'

please help with this. many thanks

@Oberoi321 Callable() is a method not a property. You missed parenthesis. Try - collections.Callable()

@supriyoss - thank you, but 1) this is the code in the bs4 package, not my code, that seems to throw an error. I would imagine everybody who uses bs4 would get this error? 2) i made your change in the element module of the installed bs4 package as suggested and the error is still as below
File "/Users//Documents/bs4/element.py", line 1565, in _normalize_search_value
if (isinstance(value, str) or isinstance(value, collections.Callable()) or hasattr(value, 'match')
AttributeError: module 'collections' has no attribute 'Callable'

I'm confused, it seems to be a problem with the bs4 package rather than my code ...?

@Oberoi321 Ok now I understand, actually I missed it first time, sorry for that. In element.py try changing collections.callable to collections.abc.callable , sorry for my negligence.

Otherwise you can degrade your bs4 package and the previous code will run flawlessly, it is a bug in new bs4 package. Sorry again.

@supriyoss thank you ! to be sure, i downloaded the latest package from the pypi org site and it works :)

Can anyone assist me, my code for the assignment works but does not produce the correct result? Can anyone point me in the right direction? Am I missing something in my code?

Start at: http://py4e-data.dr-chuck.net/known_by_Summer.html
Find the link at position 18 (the first name is 1). Follow that link. Repeat this process 7 times. The answer is the last name that you retrieve.
Hint: The first character of the name of the last page that you will load is: N

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import ssl

Ignore SSL certificate errors

ctx = ssl.create_default_context()
ctx.check_hostname = False
ctx.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE

url = input('Enter URL - ')
count = int(input('Enter Count: '))
position = int(input('Enter Position: '))

for name in range(count):
html = urllib.request.urlopen(url, context=ctx).read()
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')
tags = soup('a')
count = 0
link = list()
for tag in tags:
urll = tag.get('href', None)
link.append(urll)
count = count +1
if count > position:
break

print(urll)

i also want to share my code as i was finally able to write correct code. it took me while to understand the question so i felt great after seeing positive result an getting this assignmnt done.

import re
import ssl
import urllib.request

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

lst1 = list()
name_lst = list()
url_lst = list()
url1 = input('enter first url:')
url_lst.append(url1)
repeat = input('enter no of repeats:')
position = int(input('enter url position:')) - 1
count = 0

while count < int(repeat):
ctx = ssl.create_default_context()
ctx.check_hostname = False
ctx.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE
html = urllib.request.urlopen(url_lst[int(count)], context=ctx).read()
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')

tags = soup('a')

for tag in tags:
    x = tag.get('href', None)
    lst1.append(x)

url_lst.append(lst1[int(position)])
lst1.clear()
count += 1

for url in url_lst:
y = re.findall('_([a-zA-Z]+).html', url)
name_lst.append(y[0])
print(name_lst)

import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import ssl
lst=[]

ctx = ssl.create_default_context()
ctx.check_hostname = False
ctx.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE
url = input('Enter URL - ')
pos= int(input(' Enter position: '))

for i in range(7):

    html = urllib.request.urlopen(url, context=ctx).read()
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')

    tags = soup('a')
    for stuff in tags:
            x=stuff.get('href', None)
            lst.append(x)
    url=lst[pos]       
    print(url)
    lst.clear()

Start at: http://py4e-data.dr-chuck.net/known_by_Kedrick.html
Find the link at position 18 (the first name is 1). Follow that link. Repeat this process 7 times. The answer is the last name that you retrieve.
Hint: The first character of the name of the last page that you will load is: L

please help me, I don't know what the problem is!!!! here is my code:

import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error
import ssl
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

ctx = ssl.create_default_context()
ctx.check_hostname = False
ctx.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE

url = "http://py4e-data.dr-chuck.net/known_by_Kedrick.html"

for i in range(7):
html = urllib.request.urlopen(url, context=ctx).read()
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')
tags = soup('a')
count = 0
for tag in tags:
count = count +1

    if count > 18:
        break
    url = tag.get('href', None)
    name = tag.contents[0]

print(name)

The instructions for this assignment were poorly written and vague. Thank you for the help in clarifying the assignment a bit.

In case of some people if the above code does not work, try the following

import urllib.request, urllib.parse, urllib.error
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

url = input('Enter URL - ')
html = urllib.request.urlopen(url).read()
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')

Find all the tags with class="comments"

span_tags = soup.find_all('span', class_='comments')

count = 0
total_sum = 0

for span in span_tags:
# Extract the text content of the span tag and convert to an integer
count += 1
total_sum += int(span.contents[0])

print("Count", count)
print("Sum", total_sum)

Here's how the code works:

It takes the URL as input from the user.
It retrieves the HTML content from the specified URL using urllib.request.urlopen.
It uses BeautifulSoup to parse the HTML and find all the tags with the class "comments" using soup.find_all.
It initializes two variables count and total_sum to keep track of the number of comments and the sum of the comments, respectively.
It iterates through each tag, converts the text content of the tag to an integer using int(span.contents[0]), and adds it to the total_sum.
Finally, it prints the total count and sum of the comments.
When you run the script, it will prompt you to enter the URL (e.g., http://py4e-data.dr-chuck.net/comments_42.html) and then display the count and sum of the comments in the given URL.