Question

Trying the following code doesn’t seem to work out for me quite as planned:
from beautifulsoup import BeautifulSoup

definition = """From encyclopedia:\n<i></i><p>Infobox Country<br>fullcountryname=Thailand  &#x0E23;&#x0E32;&#x0E0A;&#x0E2D;&#x0E32;&#x0E13;&#x0E32;&#x0E08;&#x0E31;&#x0E01;&#x0E23;&#x0E44;&#x0E17;&#x0E22;Raja-anachakra Thai <br>image_flag= Flag of Thailand.svg <br>image_coa= Coat of arms of Thailand.png <br>image_location= LocationThailand.png <br>nationalmotto= none <br>nationalsong= Phleng Chat <br>nationalflower= n/a <br>nationalanimal= n/a <br>officiallanguages= Thai (<r><i>Thai language</i></r>) <br>populationtotal= 65,444,371 <br>populationrank= 19 <br>populationdensity= 127 <br>countrycapital= <r>Bangkok</r> <br>countrylargestcity= <r>Bangkok</r> <br>areatotal= 514,000 <br>arearank= 49 <br>areawater= n/a <br>areawaterpercent= 0.4 <br>establishedin= <r>April 7</r>, <r>1782</r> <br>leadertitlename=    <br>currency= <r>Baht</r> <br>utcoffset= +7 <br>dialingcode= 66 <br>internettld= .th<p><b>Thailand</b> is a <r>country</r> in Southeast <r>Asia</r>.  Its edges touch <r>Laos</r>, <r>Cambodia</r>, <r>Malaysia</r>, and <r>Myanmar</r> (which is also called Burma.) Thailand was called Siam until 1949."""

print BeautifulSoup(definition).find('p[1]').text

This does not return anything.. I’m sure it’s a syntax error with my use of BeautifulSoup, has anybody got any idea how I could simply get:

Infobox Country
fullcountryname=Thailand Raja-anachakra Thai 
image_flag= Flag of Thailand. svg 
image_coa= Coat of arms of Thailand. png 
image_location= LocationThailand. png 
nationalmotto= none 
nationalsong= Phleng Chat 
nationalflower= n/a 
nationalanimal= n/a 
officiallanguages= Thai (Thai language) 
populationtotal= 65,444,371 
populationrank= 19 
populationdensity= 127 
countrycapital= Bangkok 
countrylargestcity= Bangkok 
areatotal= 514,000 
arearank= 49 
areawater= n/a 
areawaterpercent= 0. 4 
establishedin= April 7, 1782 
leadertitlename=  
currency= Baht 
utcoffset= +7 
dialingcode= 66 
internettld= . th

Thank you 🙂

EDIT: I would actually prefer if I could get the text between the word “Infobox” and the last

tag, so that I could use the script to parse live wikipedia pages.

Answer 1

You’re using XPath syntax, which Beautiful Soup doesn’t support. Lattyware’s answer is correct. As for the question in your edit, you can use Beautiful Soup 4’s .stripped_strings generator to get approximately what you want. Some example code:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(definition)

import re
infobox_start = re.compile("^Infobox") 

start_at = soup.find(text=infobox_start)
for string in start_at.parent.stripped_strings:
    print string