python 2.7: scraping tables from a website

Question

I am probably doing my scraping incorrectly given I know little programming but I would like to know how I scrape data from an html table in python and associate it with its own class...I don't really know what Im doing so here is an example:

<div class="example">
    <a href="/example/thisexample">
      <span class="name">Product name</span>
    </a>
      <table>
        <tbody>
          <tr class="odd"> Some data </tr>
          <tr class="even"> Some data </tr>
          <tr class="odd"> Some data </tr>
          <tr class="even"> Some data </tr>
          <tr class="odd"> More data</tr>
        </tbody>
      </table>
</div>

So far Im able collect the data using lxml and place it in a list, however, the webpage contains many classes (like example) and all have different tables with more or less rows than above. I would like the data from these tables to be associated with the class aka here the product name... Sorry if this makes little sense, I am new to this and havent touched python except for an intro class a couple years ago

Answer 1

You said you store the data in lists, but you wanted them to be associated with the classes you get from the HTML? If I am understanding correctly, store them as a dictionary:

stuff = {}

stuff['class name #1'] = ['data thing #1 from table in class', 'data thing #2 from table in class', .... 'data thing #3 from table in class']
.
.
.
stuff['class name #n'] = ....

this way your "stuff" dictionary will store the things in a relational way, thus you associated what is in what by have keys to those things

does that make sense? is that what you are asking?

more about dictionaries here