wabScrape1.py

"""
Following Links in Python

In this assignment you will write a Python program that expands on
http://www.pythonlearn.com/code/urllinks.py (http://www.pythonlearn.com/code/urllinks.py). The program will
use urllib to read the HTML from the data files below, extract the href= vaues from the anchor tags, scan for a
tag that is in a particular position relative to the first name in the list, follow that link and repeat the process a
number of times and report the last name you find.

We provide two files for this assignment. One is a sample file where we give you the name for your testing and
the other is the actual data you need to process for the assignment

- Sample problem: Start at http://python­data.dr­chuck.net/known_by_Fikret.html (http://python­data.dr­
chuck.net/known_by_Fikret.html) 
Find the link at position 3 (the first name is 1). Follow that link. Repeat this process 4 times. The answer
is the last name that you retrieve.
Sequence of names: Fikret Montgomery Mhairade Butchi Anayah 
Last name in sequence: Anayah

- Actual problem: Start at: http://python­data.dr­chuck.net/known_by_Inaara.html (http://python­data.dr­
chuck.net/known_by_Inaara.html) 
Find the link at position 18 (the first name is 1). Follow that link. Repeat this process 7 times. The
answer is the last name that you retrieve.
Hint: The first character of the name of the last page that you will load is: R

Strategy
The web pages tweak the height between the links and hide the page after a few seconds to make it difficult for
you to do the assignment without writing a Python program. But frankly with a little effort and patience you can
overcome these attempts to make it a little harder to complete the assignment without writing a Python
program. But that is not the point. The point is to write a clever Python program to solve the program.
"""

import re, urllib
from BeautifulSoup import *

all_links = []
all_names = []

url_first_part = 'http://python-data.dr-chuck.net/known_by_'
url_last_part = '.html'
first_entry = 'Inaara'

for i in range(7):
    url = url_first_part + first_entry + url_last_part

    html = urllib.urlopen(url).read()
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html)

    #def get_next_name(url)
    tags = soup('a')
    links = []
    for tag in tags:
        links.append(tag.get('href', None))
    url = links[17]
    print url

    name = url[41:]
    next_entry = name[:-5]
    all_names.append(next_entry)
    first_entry = next_entry
    url = url_first_part + first_entry + url_last_part
    all_links.append(url)
    print all_names[-1]

from urllib.request import urlopen
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import ssl

ctx = ssl.create_default_context() # Ignore SSL certificate errors

ctx.check_hostname = False
ctx.verify_mode = ssl.CERT_NONE

url = input('Enter URL: ')
c = input('Enter count: ')
pos = input('Enter position: ')
print(url)

for i in range(int(c)):
html = urlopen(url, context=ctx).read()
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser")
tags = soup('a')
url = tags[int(pos)-1].get('href',None)
print(url)
#you get an URL, print it. Then you look for the anchor tag at index which is pos - 1 and get the key value i.e, url present in the href attribute
#then you open that url, print it and do the same for the remaining number of times (count no. of times)
#in the end retrieve the last url