Convert HTML (unordered) list to nested Python dictionary

Question

If I have a nested HTML (unordered) list that looks like this:

<<ul style="">
  <li class="jstree-last jstree-open" id="wfo-7000000004">
    <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
    <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-7000000004">
      <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
      Acoraceae
    </a>
    <ul style="">
      <li class="jstree-last jstree-open" id="wfo-4000000350">
        <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
        <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-4000000350">
          <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
          Acorus
        </a>
        <ul style="">
          <li class="jstree-open" id="wfo-0000350733">
            <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
            <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-0000350733">
              <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
              Acorus calamus
            </a>
            <ul style="">
              <li class="jstree-leaf" id="wfo-0000350841">
                <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
                <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-0000350841">
                  <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
                  Acorus calamus var. americanus
                </a>
              </li>
              <li class="jstree-last jstree-leaf" id="wfo-0000350949">
                <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
                <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-0000350949">
                  <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
                  Acorus calamus var. angustatus
                </a>
              </li>
            </ul>
          </li>
          <li class="jstree-last jstree-leaf" id="wfo-0000352676">
            <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
            <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-0000352676">
              <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
              Acorus gramineus
            </a>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

How do I form a nested dictionary out of it in Python? For example:

{
  Acorales: {
    Acoraceae: {
      Acorus: {
        Acoruscalamus: [
          Acoruscalamusvar.americanus,
          Acoruscalamusvar.angustatus
        ],
        Acorusgramineus
      }
    }
  }
}

I presume libraries like Beautiful Soup and HTML Parser have facilities to do this (with for loops in python), but I haven't been able it figure it out. Thanks for any help!

I tried this way:

def create_dic(soup):
    return {li.a.get_text().replace("\xa0", ""): create_dic(li)
            for ul in soup('ul', recursive=False)
            for li in ul('li', recursive=False)}

However, the output is like this (where Acorus calamus var. americanus and Acorus calamus var. angustatus shoud be in a list, and Acorus gramineus not a dictionary):

{'Acorales': {'Acoraceae': {'Acorus': {'Acorus calamus': {'Acorus calamus var. americanus': {},
                                                          'Acorus calamus var. angustatus': {}},
                                       'Acorus gramineus': {}}}}}

Answer 1

I will answer the question, because to make the answer from Parsing nested HTML list with BeautifulSoup work, you have to call beautifulsoup to parse your html uls. I also marked the question as duplicate so if its duplicate just close/delete.

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

htmlbody = '''
<<ul style="">
  <li class="jstree-last jstree-open" id="wfo-7000000004">
    <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
    <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-7000000004">
      <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
      Acoraceae
    </a>
    <ul style="">
      <li class="jstree-last jstree-open" id="wfo-4000000350">
        <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
        <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-4000000350">
          <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
          Acorus
        </a>
        <ul style="">
          <li class="jstree-open" id="wfo-0000350733">
            <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
            <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-0000350733">
              <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
              Acorus calamus
            </a>
            <ul style="">
              <li class="jstree-leaf" id="wfo-0000350841">
                <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
                <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-0000350841">
                  <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
                  Acorus calamus var. americanus
                </a>
              </li>
              <li class="jstree-last jstree-leaf" id="wfo-0000350949">
                <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
                <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-0000350949">
                  <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
                  Acorus calamus var. angustatus
                </a>
              </li>
            </ul>
          </li>
          <li class="jstree-last jstree-leaf" id="wfo-0000352676">
            <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
            <a class="" href="taxon/wfo-0000352676">
              <ins class="jstree-icon"> </ins>
              Acorus gramineus
            </a>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

'''

def ul_to_dict(ul):
    result = {}
    for li in ul.find_all("li", recursive=False):
        key = next(li.stripped_strings)
        ul = li.find("ul")
        if ul:
            result[key] = ul_to_dict(ul)
        else:
            result[key] = None
    return result

# Let BeautifulSoup do it's magic and parse ul from the HTML.
htmlbody = BeautifulSoup(htmlbody).ul
# run our function
ul_to_dict(htmlbody)