Python picking texts from Html using Regular Expression

Question

Part of the original text is like below and stored in a txt file. Html source code alike but incomplete.

<span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('1056').click()">Steffen Eddine (PhD) (SEED)</span></span></div><script>HI466("100256").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:95px;top:15px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="321" name="021"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2321').click()">Petra Schmidt (PESC)</span></span></div><script>HI466("239021").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:65px;top:15px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="306" name="366"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2366').click()">Peter Kumar (PEKU)</span></span></div><script>HI466("230866").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:25px;top:35px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="425" name="511"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2421').click()">Raksha Khaldoun (RAKH)</span></span></div><script>HI466("242511").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:95px;top:35px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="176" name="146"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2176').click()">Yash Chevalier (YACH)</span>

what I want is to pick up the names such as “Steffen Eddine (PhD) (SEED)” from there.

Obviously they all begins with “

import re

with open ("original_text.txt", "r") as myfile:
data = myfile.read()

aa = re.search(""<span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="", data)

How can I pick them out? (I tried to use BeautifulSoup too but not really successful).

---

user Aaron submitted below. I found it very close to what I need.

However it only returns 5 "span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="". what further I need to take on?

for m in re.finditer('<span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="',data, re.IGNORECASE | re.MULTILINE):
    print m.group(0)

Answer 1

Never use regex for parsing html and xml files, you can simply use the relative modules like lxml or some thing like beautifulsoup :

>>> from lxml.html import fromstring
>>> s="""<span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('1056').click()">Steffen Eddine (PhD) (SEED)</span></span></div><script>HI466("100256").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:95px;top:15px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="321" name="021"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2321').click()">Petra Schmidt (PESC)</span></span></div><script>HI466("239021").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:65px;top:15px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="306" name="366"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2366').click()">Peter Kumar (PEKU)</span></span></div><script>HI466("230866").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:25px;top:35px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="425" name="511"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2421').click()">Raksha Khaldoun (RAKH)</span></span></div><script>HI466("242511").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:95px;top:35px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="176" name="146"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2176').click()">Yash Chevalier (YACH)</span>"""
>>> st=fromstring(s)
>>> [c.text for c in st.getchildren() if c.text]
['Steffen Eddine (PhD) (SEED)', 'HI466("100256").checked=T', 'HI466("239021").checked=T', 'HI466("230866").checked=T', 'HI466("242511").checked=T']

Here you can use lxml to extract the text,then modify the result as you want to get a proper result!

Answer 2

see here a demo https://regex101.com/r/gE8rD2/1

import re
p = re.compile(ur'">([^<]+)', re.MULTILINE)
test_str = "your string"

re.findall(p, test_str)

Answer 3

Same with BeautifulSoup:

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup                                                                                                                       
data = '''<span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('1056').click()">Steffen Eddine (PhD) (SEED)</span></span></div><script>HI466("100256").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:95px;top:15px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="321" name="021"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2321').click()">Petra Schmidt (PESC)</span></span></div><script>HI466("239021").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:65px;top:15px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="306" name="366"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2366').click()">Peter Kumar (PEKU)</span></span></div><script>HI466("230866").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:25px;top:35px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="425" name="511"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2421').click()">Raksha Khaldoun (RAKH)</span></span></div><script>HI466("242511").checked=T</script><div id=“k62” style="left:95px;top:35px;width:32;height:25;"><span id="176" name="146"><span style="cursor:pointer" onmousedown="HI466('2176').click()">Yash Chevalier (YACH)</span>'''
soup = BeautifulSoup(data)                                                                                                                                    
print [s.string for s in soup.findAll('span') if s.string]