how to take date value from string in python?

Question

I'm fetch value from the URL.

import urllib2
response = urllib2.urlopen('url')    
response.read()

It's give me too long string type output, but I only put here what I have issue.

STRING TYPE OUTPUT:

'<p>Dear Customer,</p>
<p>This notice serves as proof of delivery for the shipment listed below.</p>
<dl class="outHozFixed clearfix"><label>Weight:</label></dt><dd>18.00 lbs</dd>
<dt><label>Shipped&#047;Billed On:</label></dt><dd>09/11/2015</dd>
<dt><label>Delivered On:</label></dt><dd>09/14/2015 11:07 A.M.</dd>
<dt><label for="">Signed By:</label></dt><dd>Odedra</dd></dt>
<dt><label>Left At:</label></dt>
<dd>Office</dd></dl><p>Thank you for giving us this opportunity to serve you.</p>'

QUESTION:

how I can take date (09/14/2015 11:07 AM) which is assign for Delivered On ?

Answer 1

You could start by using something like Beautiful Soup or some other html parser. It might look something like this:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import urllib2
response = urllib2.urlopen('url')    
html = response.read()
soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
datestr = soup.find("label", text="Delivered On:").find_parent("dt").find_next_sibling("dd").string

And if you need to, once you have a hold of the date string, you can use strptime to convert it to a datetime object.

import datetime
date = datetime.datetime.strptime(datestr, "%mm/%dd/%Y %I:%M %p")

Remember - you generally should not find yourself parsing HTML or XML with regexes...

Answer 2

Try this code:

import re

text = '''<p>Dear Customer,</p>
          <p>This notice serves as proof of delivery for the shipment listed below.</p>
          <dl class="outHozFixed clearfix"><label>Weight:</label></dt>
          <dd>18.00 lbs</dd>
          <dt><label>Shipped&#047;Billed On:</label></dt>
          <dd>09/11/2015</dd>
          <dt><label>Delivered On:</label></dt><dd>09/14/2015 11:07 A.M.</dd>
          <dt><label for="">Signed By:</label></dt><dd>Odedra</dd></dt>
          <dt><label>Left At:</label></dt>
          <dd>Office</dd></dl><p>Thank you for giving us this opportunity to serve you.</p>'''

re.findall(r'<dt><label>Delivered On:<\/label><\/dt><dd>([0-9\.\/\s:APM]+)', text)

OUTPUT:

['09/14/2015 11:07 A.M.']

Answer 3

Based on that output only, I would use re and re.search . Create a regex for finding a date with time, like this:

import re

output = '''<p>Dear Customer,</p>
            <p>This notice serves as proof of delivery for the shipment listed below.</p>
            <dl class="outHozFixed clearfix"><label>Weight:</label></dt><dd>18.00 lbs</dd>
            <dt><label>Shipped&#047;Billed On:</label></dt><dd>09/11/2015</dd>
            <dt><label>Delivered On:</label></dt><dd>09/14/2015 11:07 A.M.</dd>
            <dt><label for="">Signed By:</label></dt><dd>Odedra</dd></dt>
            <dt><label>Left At:</label></dt>
            <dd>Office</dd></dl><p>Thank you for giving us this opportunity to serve you.</p>'''

pattern = '\d{2}/\d{2}/\d{4} \d{1,2}:\d{2} [A|P]\.M\.'

result = re.search(pattern, text, re.MULTILINE).group(0)

Answer 4

If you don't like regexp and third-part libraries, you always can use old-school hardcoded one-line solution:

import datetime

text_date = [item.strip() for item in input_text.split('\n') if "Delivered On:" in item][0][41:-5]
datetime.datetime.strptime(text_date.replace(".",""), "%m/%d/%Y %I:%M %p")

For one line case:

start_index = input_text.index("Delivered On:")+len("Delivered On:</label></dt><dd>")
stop_index = start_index + 21
text_date = input_text[start_index:stop_index]

Because any solution for your question will be a different type of hardcode :(

Answer 5

Try this code:

import re
a = """<p>Dear Customer,</p><p>This notice serves as proof of delivery for the shipment listed below.</p><dl class="outHozFixed clearfix"><label>Weight:</label></dt><dd>18.00 lbs</dd><dt><label>Shipped&#047;Billed On:</label></dt><dd>09/11/2015</dd><dt><label>Delivered On:</label></dt><dd>12/4/2015 11:07 A.M.</dd><dt><label for="">Signed By:</label></dt><dd>Odedra</dd></dt><dt><label>Left At:</label></dt><dd>Office</dd></dl><p>Thank you for giving us this opportunity to serve you.</p>"""
data = re.search('Delivered On:</label></dt><dd>(.*)$',a)
if data and data.group(1)[:1].isdigit(): 
    data.group(1)[:20]