csschooser/README.md

csschooser

Demo

Description:

An interactive CLI tool for choosing CSS selectors for a web page. Designed for use as a library with BeautifulSoup and Scrapy.

This project uses the BeautifulSoup and rich libraries to create an interactive element-selecting experience. It can be run as program or used as a library.

Created as a final project for the CS50P course.

Prerequisites

This project was made using Python 3.10.12 and pip 22.0.2. See requirements.txt for module information.

Installation

Using Git:

git clone https://github.com/Makaze/csschooser.git
cd csschooser
pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

On the Command Line:

$ python3 csschooser.py

As A Library:

Example using the BeautifulSoup library to print the text from all matching elements:

import csschooser

soup = csschooser.get_soup("http://github.com/Makaze/csschooser") # Example URLexit

selector = csschooser.interactive_select(soup)

for tag in soup.select(selector):
    print(tag.get_text().strip())

API / Documentation

get_soup(name):

Takes in a string name and returns a BeautifulSoup instance based on the contents of the file or URL named name. Raises a FileNotFoundError if name is neither a valid URL nor a valid file name.

get_regex(s):

Takes in a string s and returns a Regular Expression pattern as a string for matching the outermost element in s. Returns s unchanged if it contains no elements.

interactive_select(soup):

Takes in soup as a BeautifulSoup instance and prompts the user to enter a CSS selector. Matching elements are highlighted in an auto-scrolling output window. Clears the terminal screen and returns the last chosen selector when the user follows the prompt to exit.

clear(lines):

Takes in an int lines. If lines is >= 1, moves the cursor up and to the end of the line lines times and returns the resulting backtrack sequence as a string. Otherwise calls the system's clear terminal command, clearing the terminal screen, then returns False.

paginate(console, pretty):

Takes in console as a rich.Console instance and pretty as a string, then passes pretty to the console and sends the rich string to the system's pager utility (less for Linux systems).