How to turn a Html nested list into a Python's one

Question

I have this kind of Html list:

lista = """
<ul>
<li>Arts &amp; Entertainment
    <ul>
      <li>Celebrities &amp; Entertainment News</li>
      <li>Comics &amp; Animation
        <ul>
        <li>Anime &amp; Manga</li>
        <li>Cartoons</li>
        <li>Comics</li>
        </ul>
      </li>
    </ul>
</li>
</ul>

"""

and I would like to convert it into a useful python structure for further processing:

what structure do you suggest? and also how would you do that?

Which html parser are you using?

Rik Poggi
– Rik Poggi

2012-02-12 13:34:05 +00:00
Commented Feb 12, 2012 at 13:34 — Rik Poggi
– Rik Poggi, Commented Feb 12, 2012 at 13:34
As @jcollado suggested I'm using Beautiful Soup.

slwr
– slwr

2012-02-12 17:35:54 +00:00
Commented Feb 12, 2012 at 17:35 — slwr
– slwr, Commented Feb 12, 2012 at 17:35

jcollado · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-12 13:51:24Z

2

With BeautifulSoup, I'd do something like this:

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
from pprint import pprint

def parseList(tag):
    if tag.name == 'ul':
        return [parseList(item)
                for item in tag.findAll('li', recursive=False)]
    elif tag.name == 'li':
        if tag.ul is None:
            return tag.text
        else:
            return (tag.contents[0].string.strip(), parseList(tag.ul))

soup = BeautifulSoup(lista)
pprint(parseList(soup.ul))

Example output:

[(u'Arts &amp; Entertainment',
  [u'Celebrities &amp; Entertainment News',
   (u'Comics &amp; Animation',
    [u'Anime &amp; Manga', u'Cartoons', u'Comics'])])]

Note that for list items that contain an unnumbered list, a tuple is returned in which the first element is the string in the list item and the second element is a list with the contents of the unnumbered list.

answered Feb 12, 2012 at 13:51

jcollado

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1 Comment

slwr Over a year ago

I have to confess I'm having some troubles processing it. I'd like to print the whole list maintaining the hierarchy. For example printing it with different indents...

glodsky · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-12 13:43:41Z

0

You can use the Mapping Type: Dictionaries

answered Feb 12, 2012 at 13:43

glodsky

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