How to handle optional element Error

[ghbook]

Describe the bug
If we select optional element on page spatula.selectors.SelectorError: is raised, I want to handle it in process_item, catching the SelectorError: exception is not working. I aslo tried 'len(elem)' or 'elem is not None' but nothing seems to work.

[jamesturk]

Could you show some example code? Glad to advise.

…

On Dec 24, 2021, 1:41 AM -0500, ghbook ***@***.***>, wrote: Describe the bug If we select optional element on page spatula.selectors.SelectorError: is raised, I want to handle it in process_item, catching the SelectorError: exception is not working. I aslo tried 'len(elem)' or 'elem is not None' but nothing seems to work. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[ghbook]

from spatula import HtmlPage, HtmlListPage, CSS, XPath, SelectorError

class EmployeeList(HtmlListPage):
    source = "https://yoyodyne-propulsion.herokuapp.com/staff"

    selector = CSS("#employees tbody tr")

    def process_item(self, item):
        
        first = XPath('.//td[1]').match_one(item)
        last = XPath('.//td[2]').match_one(item)
        year = XPath('.//td[5]').match_one(item)

        if year:
            year = year.text
        else:
            year = None

        return dict(
            first=first.text,
            last=last.text,
            year = year
        )

In a nutshell this is what I want to do. How to handle spatula.selectors.SelectorError for year element in process_item if it doesn't exist.

[jamesturk]

can you just catch the SelectorError like a normal exception?

try:
   year = XPath('.//td[5]').match_one(item).text
except SelectorError:
   year = None