import urllib2
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup
def FetchCountryCodes():
"""Country Code List: ISO 3166-1993 (E)
This international standard provides a two-letter alphabetic code for
representing the names of countries, dependencies, and other areas of
special geopolitical interest. The source of this code set is the Codes
for the Representation of Names of Countries (ISO 3166-1993 (E)).
"""
page = urllib2.urlopen("http://xml.coverpages.org/country3166.html")
soup = BeautifulSoup(page)
page.close()
countries = []
for listrow in soup.html.body.table.findAll('tr')[1:]:
col1, col2 = listrow.findAll('td')
code = col1.renderContents()
name = col2.renderContents()
countries.append( (code, name) )
return countries
codes = FetchCountryCodes()
print codes Note(s):
- This example uses standard Python except for
[http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/ the BeautifulSoup package] which must be installed separately.