How to Fix Outputting HTML Instead of DataFrame in Python Web Scraping to Excel

Learn how to properly scrape movie titles and years in Python and output them to Excel without encountering HTML.
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Solving the Issue of HTML Output When Writing DataFrames to Excel

If you're new to Python and exploring the world of web scraping, you might encounter some challenges along the way. One common issue is trying to export your scraped data to an Excel file, only to find that the content includes HTML code instead of the desired cleaned data.

In this guide, we will explore how to effectively scrape movie names and their release years from a website and ensure that the output to Excel is both clean and readable. Let’s take a look at how to resolve the problem systematically.

Understanding the Problem

You might have been using Python libraries such as BeautifulSoup and pandas to scrape a website for movie data. After successfully creating a DataFrame, you attempt to export the results to an Excel file, but end up with HTML code in your output. This usually happens because the text you are trying to extract has not been correctly parsed, leaving the HTML tags intact in your DataFrame.

Example Scenario

Here’s a brief example:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

In this snippet, the code fetches movie titles and years, but it does not extract the text properly, which leads to HTML tags being included in the DataFrame.

The Solution

To fix this and ensure clean extraction of your data, you need to modify your code to extract only the text from the HTML elements. Here’s how:

Revised Code Snippet

Replace your existing extraction code with the following:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Explanation of the Fix

Using .text: By using .text, you extract only the text contained within the HTML element, which eliminates tags and provides clean, readable strings.

Utilizing .strip(): This method removes any leading or trailing whitespace, ensuring that the text entered into your DataFrame is neat and tidy.

Final Output: After making these changes, when you export the DataFrame with:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

you should find that the Excel file now contains only the movie titles and years without any HTML.

Final Thoughts

Web scraping can be a powerful tool when used correctly. By ensuring you're extracting text rather than the HTML elements themselves, you can create clean, readable outputs for your data analysis or reporting needs.

If you run into any other issues or have questions about web scraping in Python, feel free to reach out. Happy coding!