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Python: using a regular expression to match one line of HTML

Answer 1

+8 A:

Why use regex here at all? Why not just a simple string search?:

if not '<body>Tomcat is running...</body>' in results:
   notify_us()

Daniel Roseman 2010-03-17 14:52:19

Thanks very much. This is what I was looking for. To answer your question...I think I have a tendency to get 'lost in the weeds' and overcomplicate simple problems sometimes when using unfamiliar modules... In this case 're'.

CaseyIT 2010-03-17 15:15:52

Answer 2

A:

Since you appear to be looking for a fixed string (not a regexp) that you have some control over and can be expected to be consistent, str.find() should do just fine. Or what Daniel said.

msw 2010-03-17 14:55:28

Answer 3

+2 A:

if not 'Tomcat is running' in results:
    notify_us()

2010-03-17 14:56:28

Answer 4

A:

As you have mentioned, regular expressions aren't suited for parsing XML like structures (at least, for more complex queries). I would do something like that:

from lxml import etree
import urllib2

def tomcat_check(host='127.0.0.1', port=7880):
    response = urllib2.urlopen('http://%s:%d' % (host, port))
    html = etree.HTML(response.read())
    return html.findtext('.//body') == 'Tomcat is running...'

if tomcat_check('10.1.1.20'):
    print 'Tomcat is running...'
else:
    # notify someone

tux21b 2010-03-17 14:59:45

in this case, he's not so much parsing as he is looking for a specific sequence of bytes.

Bryan Oakley 2010-03-17 15:48:55

Answer 5

+1 A:

There are lots of different methods:

str.find()

if results.find("Tomcat is running...") != -1:
    print "Tomcat appears to be running"
else:
    notify_us()

Using X in Y

if "Tomcat is running..." in result:
    print "Tomcat appears to be running"
else:
    notify_us()

Using Regular Expressions

if re.search(r"Tomcat is running\.\.\.", result):
    print "Tomcat appears to be running"
else:
    notify_us()

Personally, I prefer the membership operator to test if the string is in another string.

Nick Presta 2010-03-17 15:03:04

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Python: using a regular expression to match one line of HTML

str.find()

Using X in Y

Using Regular Expressions

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