dataframe from BeautifulSoup object

Question

I want to create a dataframe from a BeautifulSoup Object -

import pandas as pd
from requests import get
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import re

# Fetch the web page
url = 'https://carbondale.craigslist.org/search/apa#search=1~gallery~0~0'
response = get(url) # link exlcudes posts with no picures
page = response.text

# Parse the HTML content
soup = BeautifulSoup(page, 'html.parser')

# Information I need 
list_url = []
title = []
location = []
price = []

# I run the following 
list_url = [a['href'] for a in soup.select('a[href^="https"]')]
title = [x.text for x in soup.find_all(class_="title")]
location = [x.text for x in soup.find_all(class_="location")]
price = [x.text for x in soup.find_all(class_="price")]

But the problem I am facing is that for some class (e.g., title or location), some elements are missing, So, while I try to create a data frame, it shows error because of None value because all lists size are not equal. You can use the len() function to check the size of the list. Actually, I want to include the word "None" for missing elements in a column in the dataframe.

Answer 1

You need to iterate over each listing in the page and add values one by one to list_url, list_location, list_title and list_price. If any one of these values is missing, then add a None to the corresponding list. Then you may create the DataFrame using lists.

To iterate over the list, I had to look at the how the rows were structured and noticed a li class="cl-static-search-result" was being used. You can then iterate over this list to find the required values instead of using find_all on the whole page which does not take into account the relation between items within a listing.

Try this:

import pandas as pd
from requests import get
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup


# Fetch the web page
url = 'https://carbondale.craigslist.org/search/apa#search=1~gallery~0~0'
response = get(url) # link exlcudes posts with no picures
page = response.text

# Parse the HTML content
soup = BeautifulSoup(page, 'html.parser')

# Extract listings from the page
listings = soup.find_all('li', class_='cl-static-search-result')

for listing in listings:
    # Extract URL
    url = listing.find('a')
    list_url.append(url['href'] if url else None)

    # Extract Title
    title_text = listing.find('div', class_='title')
    title.append(title_text.text if title_text else None)
    
    # Extract Location
    location_text = listing.find('div', class_='location')
    location.append(location_text.text.strip() if location_text else None)
    
    # Extract Price
    price_text = listing.find('div', class_='price')
    price.append(price_text.text if price_text else None)

# Create DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame({
    'URL': list_url,
    'Title': title,
    'Location': location,
    'Price': price
})

Printing out the first 5 rows

                                                 URL                                              Title        Location Price
0  https://carbondale.craigslist.org/apa/d/johnst...                Almost New, 2 BR APT for Rent in JC   Johnston City  $900
1  https://carbondale.craigslist.org/apa/d/northb...  Enjoy 2 Bed/2 Bath/2 Car Ranch Home With Great...  Northbrook, IL  $945
2  https://carbondale.craigslist.org/apa/d/mount-...  Love where you live! Beautiful senior communit...    Mount Vernon  $848
3  https://carbondale.craigslist.org/apa/d/mount-...  Your dream 1 bed, 1 bath is closer than you th...    Mount Vernon  $848
4  https://carbondale.craigslist.org/apa/d/mount-...  Be at the center of it all: 1 BR, 1 BA, 553 Sq...    Mount Vernon  $848

For any listing, since we append a None if the value is not available or if we cannot find it. The dataframe with missing values would like this:

                                                  URL                                              Title Location   Price
16  https://carbondale.craigslist.org/apa/d/marion...  Cfd housing Houses for rent or purchase southe...     None    $500
17  https://carbondale.craigslist.org/apa/d/herrin...                         4 Bedroom/2 bathroom House     None  $1,561