Regex on a Dictionary

[Rhodri James]

On 13/02/18 13:11, Stanley Denman wrote:
> I am trying to performance a regex on a "string" of text that python isinstance is telling me is a dictionary.  When I run the code I get the following error:
> 
> {'/Title': '1F:  Progress Notes  Src.:  MILANI, JOHN C Tmt. Dt.:  05/12/2014 - 05/28/2014 (9 pages)', '/Page': IndirectObject(465, 0), '/Type': '/FitB'}
> 
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "C:\Users\stand\Desktop\PythonSublimeText.py", line 9, in <module>
>      x=MyRegex.findall(MyDict)
> TypeError: expected string or bytes-like object
> 
> Here is the "string" of code I am working with:
> 
> {'/Title': '1F:  Progress Notes  Src.:  MILANI, JOHN C Tmt. Dt.:  05/12/2014 - 05/28/2014 (9 pages)', '/Page': IndirectObject(465, 0), '/Type': '/FitB'}
> 
> I want to grab the name "MILANI, JOHN C" and the last date "-mm/dd/yyyy" as a pair such that if I have  X numbers of string like the above I will end out with N pairs of values (name and date)/  Here is my code:
>   
> import PyPDF2,re
> pdfFileObj=open('x.pdf','rb')
> pdfReader=PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdfFileObj)
> Result=pdfReader.getOutlines()
> MyDict=(Result[-1][0])
> print(MyDict)
> print(isinstance(MyDict,dict))
> MyRegex=re.compile(r"MILANI,")
> x=MyRegex.findall(MyDict)
> print(x)

As the error message says, re.findall() expects a string.  A dictionary 
is in no sense a string, so passing it in whole like that won't work. 
If you know that the name will always show up in the title field, you 
can pass just the title:

   x = MyRegex.findall(MyDict['/Title'])

Otherwise you will have to loop through all the entries in the dictionary:

   for entry in MyDict.values():
     x = MyRegex.findall(entry)
     # ...and do something with x

I rather suspect you are going to find that the titles aren't in a very 
systematic format, though.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd