Python Scraper

py_web_scraper.py

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from urllib3 import PoolManager
from time import sleep

BASE_URL = 'http://www.chicagoreader.com'

def make_soup(url):
	html = urlopen(section_url).read()
	return BeautifulSoup(html, 'lxml')
	
def get_category_links(section_url):
	soup = make_soup(url)
	boccat = coup.find('dl', 'boccat')
	category_links = [BASE_URL + dd.a['href'] for dd in boccat.findALL('dd')]
	return category_links
	
def get_category_winner(category_url):
	soup = make_soup(url)
	category = soup.find('h1', 'headline').string
	winner = [h2.string for h2 in soup.findALL('h2', 'boc1')]
	runners_up = [h2.string for h2 in soup.findALL('h2', 'boc2')]
	return {
		'category': category,
		'category_url': category_url,
		'winner': winner,
		'runners_up': runners_up,
	}
		
if __name__ == '__main__':
	food_n_drink = ('http://chicagoreader.com/chicago'
					'best-of-chicago-2011-food-drink/BestOf?oid=4106228')
	
	categories = get_category_links(food_n_drink)
	
	data = []
	for category in categories:
		winner = get_category_winner(category)
		data.append(winner)
		sleep(1)
		
	print data

It's important to keep in mind that using "url" in multiple functions to mean different URLs is fine ... as long as it isn't a global variable. (Globals should be used sparingly.)

Sure. I'm not solid enough with my Python to know how to define it otherwise.

I'm not sure that's making sense to me. Of course I'm making some assumptions about what you're trying to do, but I don't think you need a make_other_soup unless you want it to do a different thing than make_soup. If I have:

def make_soup(yooarrell):
[stuff]

and I call:
foo = make_soup(section_url);
bar = make_soup(category_url);

I expect to get different things back for foo and bar.

Ahh. That makes sense I think. Lemme see what I can get going. Thanks!