Beautifulsoup If Else Statement

JaredPilbeam2 — Sun, 12 Dec 2021 08:00:53 GMT

The if else statement is sending an email no matter what I use in the if part. I'm not sure what the problem is. I tried a bunch of different operators, namely <3, <=3, <2, == -3, == 3.

(1.) I wanted to check the number of times a given word occurred in the HTML. (2.) If it occurred equal to or less than the number given, stop. Anything else, proceed (the script goes on to send an email out).

'''Checks school websites for changes in meal assistance during C19 pandemic'''

# Import requests (to download the page)
import requests
# Import BeautifulSoup (to parse what we download)
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
# Import win32com (to allow email)
import win32com.client
from win32com.client import Dispatch, constants
import re

while True:
    #set the url
     url = 'https://manteno5.org/news/what_s_new/c_o_v_i_d-19_updates'
    #set the headers like we are a browser
    headers = {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 ( KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.95 Safari/537.36'}
    # download the homepage
    response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)
    # parse the downloaded homepage and grab all text
    soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "lxml")
    #the word I'm looking for
    searched_word = 'Grab and Go'
    #find how many times the word occurs
    results = soup.body.find_all(text=re.compile('{0}'.format(searched_word)), recursive=True)
    print('Found the word "{0}" {1} time(s)\n'.format(searched_word, len(results)))
    #if the number of times "Grab and Go" occurs on the page is less 
    #than a given number print "No change"
    if str(soup).find(searched_word) == -3:
        print("No change")
        continue
    #but if the word "Grab and Go" occurs any other number of times
    else:
         #script goes on to send an email...
        break‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

It sent the email even though "Grab and Go" only occurred three times? Print out:

Found the word "Grab and Go" 3 time(s)‍‍‍‍

Re: Beautifulsoup If Else Statement

DanPatterson_Retired — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 07:57:12 GMT

if len(results) <= 3:

do stuff

from the line that did the printing, you got the 'len' of results already

Re: Beautifulsoup If Else Statement

JoshuaBixby — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 12:34:42 GMT

The Python str.find() method doesn't return the number of occurrences, it returns the lowest index of the substring.

Re: Beautifulsoup If Else Statement

JoshuaBixby — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 12:39:32 GMT

"Grab and Go" isn't being found 3 times but 2 times while "grab and go" is being found 1 time. The searches you are doing are case sensitive.

Re: Beautifulsoup If Else Statement

JaredPilbeam2 — Sun, 12 Dec 2021 08:00:55 GMT

I did notice that the bs4 search was case sensitive. I've actually looked into ways to deal with that, but forgot about it.

I used Dan's approach and it worked. But I had to take it out of the while loop because it was running endlessly.

if len(results) <= 3:

     do stuff‍‍‍

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