How to remove element from list if element is present in list Python

Question

I have a list of lists that I am trying to remove an element from each list if the element is present in the list.

Code:

import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# get link and parse
page = requests.get('https://www.finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=111&ft=4')
soup = BeautifulSoup(page.text, 'html.parser')

print('List of filters\n')

# return 'Title's for each filter
titles = soup.find_all('span', attrs={'class': 'screener-combo-title'})
title_list = []
for t in titles:
    title_list.append(t.contents)

print(title_list)

Sample output:

[['Price/Free Cash Flow'], ['EPS growth', <br/>, 'this year'], ['EPS growth', <br/>, 'next year']]

Desired output:

[['Price/Free Cash Flow'], ['EPS growth', 'this year'], ['EPS growth', 'next year']]

The issue I have been running into is that my checks to see if the element is present aren't working. I have tried if '<br/>' in whatever: and whatever.remove('<br/>') . NoneType is non callable . I see that I am putting <br/> in as a string, but I also see it's not a string in the list. I have tried dropping '' and that came back unresolved reference . I have tried checking if each list has multiple elements and if so to remove the 2nd element but that also came back NoneType is non callable .

Answer 1

Maybe you can try by only appending objet with isinstance of string:

for t in titles:
    title_sublist=[] 
    for content in t.contents:
        if isinstance(content, str) :
            title_sublist.append(content)
    title_list.append(title_sublist)

Answer 2

Elements of your lists aren't strings. They are instances of bs4.element. class. You have to compare it like this:

title_list = []
for t in titles:
    title_list.append([])
    for c in t.contents:
        if c.string != None:
            title_list[-1].append(c) # or c.string if you need only names

.string of </br> is empty None and for the others it is what you see in output.

Answer 3

In this case .strings and .stripped_strings should be preferred over .contents

So change

for t in titles:
    title_list.append(t.contents)

to

for t in titles:
    title_list.append(list(t.stripped_strings))