Extracting a table from the Web

Hey!

I have recently begun learning computer programming using the Python language (using Python 2.5.4). I use Mac OS X. Amidst my learning, I have been assigned the task to extract a web table, which I will specify in a second, using Python programming and convert it into a format that is readable by (can be placed neatly and directed into) Microsoft Excel.

The link below has one table with statistics about the National Hockey League (NHL).

nhl.com/ice/gamestats.htm?season=20112012&gameType=2&team=&viewName=summary

I have been reading about ways to complete the task, but I realize that people with much more experience using Python may be able to help me more than the books.

If anyone has a code that is designed to do just this and can be adjusted to the particular website that I need to work with, provide any helpful and guiding knowledge in generating the code, or even texts which I can read that will help me write the code, that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Looks like there are several tables on that page. Five tables? (search the page source for "<table")
The most obvious one says that it shows rows 1-30 of 1230 results. Do you need all 1230?

You might try the python csv library module to write a file that excel can read.

The python libraries also are packed with html functionality. There could be a reader that, as one of its features, identifies tables. I myself would do something stupid like write my own code to parse the page source, find the table rows <tr>blah blah blah </tr>
where the stuff in between is table data <td>information</td>
but hey, that may account for my being unemployed.