Question

Well, i have written a simple python program that parses HTML with HTMLParser. Here is my code

import re
import os.path
import getopt
import getpass
import atom
import getopt
import sys
import string
import cookielib
import ClientCookie
import urllib
import urllib2
from HTMLParser import HTMLParser
from htmlentitydefs import name2codepoint

url = 'http://distribucija.altpro.hr/cjenik_include.php'
all_data = []

def ReParse(pin):
  global values
  values = {'kaj' : 'sifra',
            'rijec' : pin,
            'prikaz' : '20' }
  data = urllib.urlencode(values)
  req = urllib2.Request(url, data)
  response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
  global the_page 
  the_page = response.read()


class MyHTMLParser(HTMLParser):
  def handle_data(self, data):
    all_data.append(data)

parser = MyHTMLParser()

ReParse('3884429')

parser.feed(the_page)
print all_data[74]



ReParse('1241236')
parser.feed(the_page)
print all_data[74]

Now, the first parser.feed(…. works and all_data[74] is right, but second feed gives exactly the same thing that the first one does, but it shouldn’t. Can anyone help me ?

Answer 1

You’re re-assigning values each time. You want to move this:

values = {'kaj' : 'sifra',
        'rijec' : '', #notice the change to a blank string.
        'prikaz' : '20' }

To the outside of ReParse. And then, inside of that function, you will want to put this:

global values
values['rijec'] = pin

You also seem to have missed all_data. It does not exist in the MyHTMLParser scope.

class MyHTMLParser(HTMLParser):
    def handle_data(self, data):
        # global statement should be her.
        all_data.append(data)

I do feel that it might be a good idea to warn you that “global scope” is often not your best option, but that is a separate matter.