Beautiful Soup 找不到第一个标签 (XML)

Question

I am using BeautifulSoup 4 (and the parser lmxl) to parse an XML file used for the MLB API . The API generates a scoreboard for the current games for a particular day, and I'm having trouble getting Beautiful Soup to recognize a particular tab.

For instance, I am looking at today's games , trying to extract the scores and names for a certain team based on their away_file_code or home_file_code . If we look at the Baltimore Orioles vs Toronto Blue Jays, the game scoreboard XML will look like this:

<games year="2017" month="04" day="16" modified_date="2017-04-17T01:42:57Z" next_day_date="2017-04-17">
<game id="2017/04/16/balmlb-tormlb-1" venue="Rogers Centre" game_pk="490271" time="1:07" time_date="2017/04/16 1:07" time_date_aw_lg="2017/04/16 1:07" time_date_hm_lg="2017/04/16 1:07" time_zone="ET" ampm="PM" first_pitch_et="" away_time="1:07" away_time_zone="ET" away_ampm="PM" home_time="1:07" home_time_zone="ET" home_ampm="PM" game_type="R" tiebreaker_sw="N" resume_date="" original_date="2017/04/16" time_zone_aw_lg="-4" time_zone_hm_lg="-4" time_aw_lg="1:07" aw_lg_ampm="PM" tz_aw_lg_gen="ET" time_hm_lg="1:07" hm_lg_ampm="PM" tz_hm_lg_gen="ET" venue_id="14" scheduled_innings="9" description="" away_name_abbrev="BAL" home_name_abbrev="TOR" away_code="bal" away_file_code="bal" away_team_id="110" away_team_city="Baltimore" away_team_name="Orioles" away_division="E" away_league_id="103" away_sport_code="mlb" home_code="tor" home_file_code="tor" home_team_id="141" home_team_city="Toronto" home_team_name="Blue Jays" home_division="E" home_league_id="103" home_sport_code="mlb" day="SUN" gameday_sw="P" double_header_sw="N" game_nbr="1" tbd_flag="N" away_games_back="-" home_games_back="6.5" away_games_back_wildcard="" home_games_back_wildcard="5.5" venue_w_chan_loc="CAXX0504" location="Toronto, Canada" gameday="2017_04_16_balmlb_tormlb_1" away_win="8" away_loss="3" home_win="2" home_loss="10" game_data_directory="/components/game/mlb/year_2017/month_04/day_16/gid_2017_04_16_balmlb_tormlb_1" league="AA">
<status status="Final" ind="F" reason="" inning="9" top_inning="N" b="0" s="0" o="3" inning_state="" note="" is_perfect_game="N" is_no_hitter="N"/>
<linescore>...</linescore>
<home_runs>...</home_runs>
<winning_pitcher id="605164" last="Bundy" first="Dylan" name_display_roster="Bundy" number="37" era="1.86" wins="2" losses="1"/>
<losing_pitcher id="457918" last="Happ" first="J.A." name_display_roster="Happ" number="33" era="4.50" wins="0" losses="3"/>
<save_pitcher id="" last="" first="" number="" name_display_roster="" era="0" wins="0" losses="0" saves="0" svo="0"/>
<links mlbtv="bam.media.launchPlayer({calendar_event_id:'14-490271-2017-04-16',media_type:'video'})" wrapup="/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2017_04_16_balmlb_tormlb_1&mode=wrap&c_id=mlb" home_audio="bam.media.launchPlayer({calendar_event_id:'14-490271-2017-04-16',media_type:'audio'})" away_audio="bam.media.launchPlayer({calendar_event_id:'14-490271-2017-04-16',media_type:'audio'})" home_preview="/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2017_04_16_balmlb_tormlb_1&mode=preview&c_id=mlb" away_preview="/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2017_04_16_balmlb_tormlb_1&mode=preview&c_id=mlb" preview="/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2017_04_16_balmlb_tormlb_1&mode=preview&c_id=mlb" tv_station="SNET-1"/>
<broadcast>...</broadcast>
<alerts text="Final score in Toronto: Baltimore 11, Toronto 4" brief_text="At TOR: Final - BAL 11, TOR 4" type="status"/>
<game_media>...</game_media>
<video_thumbnail>...</video_thumbnail>
<video_thumbnails>...</video_thumbnails>
</game>
<game>...</game> (etc...)

The below is a snippet of code I am using to try and find the game (not games ) tag, and it's attributes. The issue is, when I request game, it returns None. However, I can return any other tag without an issue-- status , for example, works perfectly fine.

soup = BeautifulSoup(webpage, 'xml') # webpage is the xml file for today's games
tags = soup.findAll('game', {'home_file_code': 'tor'}) #supposed to find the tags for the home_file_code matching the home team's abbreviation
for games in tags:
    print(games.find('status')['status'] #works without an issue
    print(games.find('game')['home_file_code'] #throws below error, because games.find('game') is None

TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not subscriptable

Also, if I print the children for list ( print(list(games.children)) ), it returns everything except game.

Is there something I'm missing about the XML as to why it can't grab that first tag? I'm pretty confused because this was working for me not too long ago, and I'm not sure what I changed that's causing the error.

Answer 1

It appears I misunderstood the find function. You can index it for a keyword to lookup within the tag itself the attribute you want. So, essentially I should have been doing the following:

soup = BeautifulSoup(webpage, 'xml') # webpage is the xml file for today's games
tags = soup.findAll('game', {'home_file_code': 'tor'})
for games in tags:
    print(games.find('status')['status']
    print(games['home_file_code'])

Now print(games['home_file_code'] will find the home_file_code as expected because it already exists within the tag we looked up.

I'm sure someone can give a more thorough answer, but that was the fundamental misunderstanding I was having.

Answer 2

I'm not the greatest of programmers, but I'm pretty sure you're not finding the first tag because it is incorrectly defined. XML tags, if they contain anything, must have an opening and a closing part like this: <games>year="2017" month="04" day="16"</games> and not like this: <games year="2017" month="04" day="16"> So first thing you need to fix your XML formatting and then take it from there.