Pyparsing - Dealing with a Blank Value

[Steve]

Hi All,

I've picked up the PyParsing module and am trying to figure out how to
do a simple parsing of some HTML source code.  My specific problem is
dealing with an <TD></TD> element that is blank.



from pyparsing import *
import sys


integer = Word("0123456789")

trStart = Literal("<TR>").suppress()
trEnd = Literal("</TR>").suppress()

tdStart = Literal("<TD>").suppress()
tdEnd = Literal("</TD>").suppress()

#dataItem = Word(alphas)
BlankItem = Word('')
dataItem = Word(alphanums + " " + "," + ":") # works with spaces in
data
MultiItem = Optional(OneOrMore(dataItem))

TestLine = ['<TR><TD>Group</TD><TD>Year</TD><TD>City</TD></TR>',
           '<TR><TD>AAA</TD><TD>1992</TD><TD>Los Angeles</TD></TR>',
           '<TR><TD>BBB</TD><TD>2007</TD><TD>Santa Cruz</TD></TR>',
           '<TR><TD></TD><TD>2001</TD><TD>Santa Cruz</TD></TR>']

htmlLine = trStart + tdStart + MultiItem.setResultsName('status') +
tdEnd + tdStart + MultiItem.setResultsName('year') + tdEnd + tdStart +
MultiItem.setResultsName('title') + tdEnd + trEnd


for CurrentLine in TestLine:
  print 'Line = ', CurrentLine

  for srvrtokens,startloc,endloc in htmlLine.scanString( CurrentLine ):
      print 'tokens = %s  %d  %d \n' % (srvrtokens, startloc,endloc)


Output :

Line =  <TR><TD>Group</TD><TD>Year</TD><TD>City</TD></TR>
tokens = ['Group', 'Year', 'City']  0  49

Line =  <TR><TD>AAA</TD><TD>1992</TD><TD>Los Angeles</TD></TR>
tokens = ['AAA', '1992', 'Los Angeles']  0  54

Line =  <TR><TD>BBB</TD><TD>2007</TD><TD>Santa Cruz</TD></TR>
tokens = ['BBB', '2007', 'Santa Cruz']  0  53


*** Blank 1st element - only shows 2 elements  - need 3 elements to be
consistent ***

Line =  <TR><TD></TD><TD>2001</TD><TD>Santa Cruz</TD></TR>
tokens = ['2001', 'Santa Cruz']  0  50


Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Steve