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Search and create list from a string Python

I am very new to Python and I am trying to create a list out of string in python.

Input = "<html><body><ul style="padding-left: 5pt"><i>(See attached file: File1.pdf)</i><i>(See attached file: File2.ppt)</i><i>(See attached file: File3.docx)</i></ul></body></html>"

Desired Output = [File1.pdf, File2.ppt, File3.docx]

What is the most efficient and pythonic way to achieve this? Any help will be very much appreciated. Thanks

Solution

  • You can use beatifulsoup, which has HTML parsing utils.

    >>> from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
>>> html = """<html><body><ul style="padding-left: 5pt"><i>(See attached file: File1.pdf)</i><i>(See attached file: File2.ppt)</i><i>(See attached file: File3.docx)</i></ul></body></html>"""
>>> soup = BeautifulSoup(html, parser='html')
>>> files_list = [i.text.split('file: ')[1].replace(')', '') for i in soup.find_all('i')]
>>> print(files_list)
['File1.pdf', 'File2.ppt', 'File3.docx']