Suitable Python code to scrape specific details from web pages.

[Simon Evans]

On Tuesday, August 12, 2014 9:00:30 PM UTC+1, Simon Evans wrote:
> Dear Programmers,
> 
> I have been looking at the You tube 'Web Scraping Tutorials' of Chris Reeves. I have tried a few of his python programs in the Python27 command prompt, but altered them from accessing data using links say from the Dow Jones index, to accessing the details I would be interested in accessing from the 'Racing Post' on a daily basis. Anyhow, the code it returns is not in the example I am going to give, is not the information I am seeking, instead of returning the given odds on a horse, it only returns a [], which isn't much use. 
> 
> I would be glad if you could tell me where I am going wrong. 
> 
> Yours faithfully
> 
> Simon Evans.
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> >>>import urllib
> 
> >>>import re
> 
> >>>htmlfile = urllib.urlopen("http://www.racingpost.com/horses2/cards/card.sd?
> 
> 
> 
> race_id=600048r_date=2014-05-08#raceTabs=sc_")
> 
> htmltext = htmlfile.read()
> 
> regex = '<strong>1<a href="http://www.racingpost.com/horses/horse_home.sd?
> 
> 
> 
> horse_id=758752"onclick="scorecards.send("horse_name&quot:):return Html.popup(this,
> 
> 
> 
> {width:695,height:800})"title="Full details about this HORSE">Lively 
> 
> 
> 
> Baron</a>9/4F</strong><br/>'
> 
> >>>pattern = re.compile(regex)
> 
> >>>odds=re.findall(pattern,htmltext)
> 
> >>>print odds
> 
> []
> 
> >>>
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> >>>import urllib
> 
> >>>import re
> 
> >>>htmlfile = urllib.urlopen("http://www.racingpost.com/horses2/cards/card.sd?
> 
> 
> 
> >>>race_id=600048r_date=2014-05-08#raceTabs=sc_")
> 
> >>>htmltext = htmlfile.read()
> 
> >>>regex = '<a></a>'
> 
> >>>pattern = re.compile(regex)
> 
> >>>odds=re.findall(pattern,htmltext)
> 
> >>>print odds
> 
> []
> 
> >>>
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Programmers, Thank you for your responses. I have installed 'Beautiful Soup' and I have the 'Getting Started in Beautiful Soup' book, but can't seem to make  any progress with it, I am too thick to make much use of it. I was hoping I could scrape specified stuff off Web pages without using it. I have installed 'Requests' also, is there any code I can use that you can suggest that can access the sort of Web page values that I have referred to ?  such as odds, names of runners, stuff like that off the 'inspect element' or 'source' htaml pages, on www.Racingpost.com.