Transform html tables into usable data structures. Using beautiful soup table object, return 2D array structure, dictionary, or array of column data. Imputes cell values from row and col spans :)

Given an html table (with or without row and col spans). You can make a 2D array

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup as bs
from html_table_parser import parser_functions as parse

soup = bs(YOUR_HTML_TABLE, "html.parser")
test_table = soup.find('table')
twod_array = parse.make2d(test_table)

# print 2D array
print(twod_array)

Use that 2D array to return column data by heading name

# print column data by col heading name (case insensitive)
print(parse.twod_col_data(twod_array, 'YOUR_COL_HEADING'))

Or transform the soup table object (test_table) into a dictionary

# row data begins on first row after col headings
# so rowstart is 1
print(parse.make_dict(test_table, 1))

I looked everywhere for the code to transform html tables with row and col spans into a 2D array and couldn't find it. So I thought how hard could it be to quickly write my own. It was actally kinda hard, so here it is for the next guy.

Works on Python 2.7 and Python 3.4.

$ pip install html_table_parser

$ py.test

Don't be shy.

MIT