Attributeerror: 'nonetype' object has no attribute 'string' when parsing HTML with beautifulsoup

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I'm parsing the HTML from a "most recent changes" page on a Fandom wiki with this code using BeautifulSoup:

Python

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

with open("Recent changes Vintergatan Wiki Fandom.htm") as html:
  doc = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser")

results = doc.find_all(class_="mw-changeslist-line-inner")

for articles in results:
  name = (articles.find("a")) # Article name
  number = (articles.find(dir="ltr")) # Number of characters added/removed
  user = (articles.find("bdi")) # User who made the edit

  # Skips added together edits of the same article

  if ("×)" in articles):
    continue
  else:

    # Skips edits of user profiles

    if ("ndare:" in name.string):
      continue
    else:
      print(name.string + ", " + number.string + ', ' + user.string)

The code works perfectly fine for the most part, but it returns this error when it passes one of the articles, and I have no idea why.

print(name.string + ", " + number.string + ', ' + user.string)
                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'string'

Specifically, it's this piece of HTML that's causing the problem:

HTML

<table data-mw-revid="8933" data-mw-ts="20230902201309" 
class="mw-changeslist-line mw-changeslist-edit mw-changeslist-ns0-Aloûgg 
mw-changeslist-line-watched mw-changeslist-ns-0 mw-changeslist-ns-subject 
mw-changeslist-user-registered mw-changeslist-user-experienced 
mw-changeslist-self mw-changeslist-human mw-changeslist-major 
mw-changeslist-last mw-changeslist-src-mw-edit mw-changeslist-watched 
mw-enhanced-rc mw-tag-visualeditor">
	<tr>
		<td>
			<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights">
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-none" 
                    data-color="none"></div>
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-c1" 
                    data-color="c1"></div>
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-c2" 
                    data-color="c2"></div>
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-c3" 
                    data-color="c3"></div>
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-c4" 
                    data-color="c4"></div>
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-c5" 
                    data-color="c5"></div>
			</div>
		</td>
		<td>
			
		</td>
		<td class="mw-changeslist-line-prefix"></td>
		<td class="mw-enhanced-rc" 
        colspan="2">     22:13 </td>
		<td class="mw-changeslist-line-inner" 
        data-target-page="Aloûgg">			 
				
					<a href="/sv/wiki/Alo%C3%BBgg" 
                    class="mw-changeslist-title" 
                    title="Aloûgg">Aloûgg</a> 
				
					<span>
						<a class="mw-changeslist-diff" 
                        href="/sv/wiki/Alo%C3%BBgg? 
                        curid=646&diff=8933&
                        oldid=7958">diff</a>
					
					<span>
						<a href="/sv/wiki/Alo%C3%BBgg? 
                        action=history&curid=646" 
                        class="mw-changeslist-history" 
                        title="Aloûgg">hist</a>
					
				</span>
			</span>
			
				<span dir="ltr" class="mw-plusminus-pos 
                mw-diff-bytes" title="1,499 bytes after change">+15‎
			</span>
			
				<a href="/sv/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:User" 
                class="mw-userlink" title="Användare:User">
					<bdi>User</bdi>
				</a>				 
				
					<span>
						<a href="/sv/wiki/Message_Wall:User" 
                        class="mw-usertoollinks-wall" 
                        title="Message Wall:User">Message Wall</a>
					 
					<span>
						<a href="/sv/wiki/Special:Bidrag/User" 
                        class="mw-usertoollinks-contribs" 
                        title="Special:Bidrag/User">contribs</a>
					
				</span>
			</span>
				
					<a href="/sv/wiki/Alo%C3%BBgg? 
action=rollback&from=User&token=8bd802368bbc40821f5960e13b8d11b164f48845%2B%5C" 
     title=""Rollback" reverts the last contributor's edit(s) 
     to this page in one click" data-mw="interface">rollback</a>
			 
				<a href="/sv/wiki/Special:M%C3%A4rken" 
                title="Special:Märken">Tag</a>: 
					<span class="mw-tag-marker 
                    mw-tag-marker-visualeditor">Visual edit
				
			</span>
			
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>

And for reference, everything works perfectly fine with this one:

HTML

<table data-mw-revid="9029" 
data-mw-ts="20230903123500" class="mw-changeslist-line 
mw-changeslist-edit mw-changeslist-ns0-Wresnyj 
mw-changeslist-line-watched mw-changeslist-ns-0 
mw-changeslist-ns-subject mw-changeslist-user-registered 
mw-changeslist-user-experienced mw-changeslist-self 
mw-changeslist-human mw-changeslist-major mw-changeslist-last 
mw-changeslist-src-mw-edit mw-changeslist-watched mw-enhanced-rc 
mw-tag-visualeditor">
	<tr>
		<td>
			<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights">
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-none" 
                data-color="none"></div>
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-c1" 
                data-color="c1"></div>
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-c2" 
                data-color="c2"></div>
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-c3" 
                data-color="c3"></div>
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-c4" 
                data-color="c4"></div>
				<div class="mw-rcfilters-ui-highlights-color-c5" 
                data-color="c5"></div>
			</div>
		</td>
		<td>
			
		</td>
		<td class="mw-changeslist-line-prefix"></td>
		<td class="mw-enhanced-rc" colspan="2">     14:35 </td>
		<td class="mw-changeslist-line-inner" data-target-page="Wresnyj">			 
				
					<a href="/sv/wiki/Wresnyj" 
                    class="mw-changeslist-title" 
                    title="Wresnyj">Wresnyj</a>‎			 
				
					<span>
						<a class="mw-changeslist-diff" 
                              href="/sv/wiki/Wresnyj?                     curid=1879&diff=9029&oldid=7720">diff</a>
					
					<span>
						<a href="/sv/wiki/Wresnyj?action=history&curid=1879" class="mw-changeslist-history" title="Wresnyj">hist</a>
				</span>
			</span>
			
				<span dir="ltr" class="mw-plusminus-neg mw-diff-bytes" 
            title="690 bytes after change">−40‎
			</span>
			
				<a href="/sv/wiki/Anv%C3%A4ndare:User" 
                class="mw-userlink" title="Användare:User">
					<bdi>User</bdi>
				</a>			 
				
					<span>
						<a href="/sv/wiki/Message_Wall:User" 
                        class="mw-usertoollinks-wall" 
                    title="Message Wall:User">Message Wall</a>
					 
					<span>
						<a href="/sv/wiki/Special:Bidrag/User" 
                        class="mw-usertoollinks-contribs" 
                     title="Special:Bidrag/User">contribs</a>
				</span>
			</span>			 
				
					<a href="/sv/wiki/Wresnyj?action=rollback&from=User&token=23da4e19f25fb98b4c9fb4320490e2fe64f48844%2B%5C" title=""Rollback" reverts the last contributor's edit(s) to this page in one click" data-mw="interface">rollback</a>				 
				
					<a href="/sv/wiki/Special:M%C3%A4rken" 
                    title="Special:Märken">Tag</a>: 
					<span class="mw-tag-marker 
                    mw-tag-marker-visualeditor">Visual edit
				
			</span>
			
		</td>
	</tr>
</table>

Thanks in advance!

What I have tried:

I haven't spotted a single difference between them.

Posted 3-Sep-23 8:32am

Firegloom

Updated 11-Sep-23 10:41am

Deeksha Shenoy

v4

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Comments

Richard MacCutchan 4-Sep-23 3:57am

The error message is telling you that the variable named number has not been set. So the code at the line:

number = (articles.find(dir="ltr"))

returned nothing. You need to use the debugger to find out why.

Richard MacCutchan 4-Sep-23 4:17am

I just tried this code and it did find the number; but it also found some extra characters. So it may be that the document itself is corrupted in some way which is causing the failure.

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