How to get an attribute value using BeautifulSoup and Python?

Question

I\'m failing miserably to get an attribute value using BeautifulSoup and Python. Here is how the XML is structured:

...


    

        

Answer 1

The problem is that find_all('tag') returns the whole html block entitled tag:

>>> results.find_all('tag')                                                                      
[                                                                                     
TR=111111 Sandbox=3000613                                   
TR=121212 Sandbox=3000618                                   
TR=999999 Sandbox=3000617                                   
]

Your intention is to collect each of the stat blocks, so you should be using results.find_all('stat'):

>>> stat_blocks = results.find_all('stat')                                                                      
[TR=111111 Sandbox=3000613, TR=121212 Sandbox=3000618, TR=999999 Sandbox=3000617]

From there, it is trivial to fix the code to condense 'pass' into a list:

>>> passes = [s['pass'] if s is not None else None for s in stat_blocks]                   
>>> passes                                                                                   
['1', '1', '1']  

Or print:

>>> for s in stat_blocks:                                                                  
...     print(s['pass'])                                                                   
...                                                                                        
1                                                                                          
1                                                                                          
1     

In python, it's really important to test results because the typing is way too dynamic to trust your memory. I often include a static test function in classes and modules to ensure that the return types and values are what I expect them to be.