python - BeautifulSoup - only returning first table

Question

I've been working with BeautifulSoup lately. I'm trying to get the data from https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/mia/2000_roster.htm site. Specifically all I want is the player name and 'gs' (games started).

However, when doing it, it's only returning the 1st ('Starters') table data. I'm actually not interested in that top table at all, I want the 2nd table titled 'Roster'.

Here's the code, that I was doing. Like I said, I didn't really want/need anything other than player name and games started, but was just practicing and learning BeautifulSoup.

import pandas as pd
import requests
import bs4

alpha  = requests.get('https://www.pro-football-
reference.com/teams/mia/2000_roster.htm')

beta = bs4.BeautifulSoup(alpha.text,'lxml')


gama = beta.findAll('th',{'data-stat':'pos'})
position = [th.text for th in gama]
position = position[1:]
position = list(filter(None, position))

gama = beta.findAll('td',{'data-stat':'player'})
player = [td.text for td in gama]
player = player[1:]
while 'Defensive Starters' in player: player.remove('Defensive Starters')
while 'Special Teams Starters' in player: player.remove('Special Teams 
Starters')

gama = beta.findAll('td',{'data-stat':'age'})
age = [td.text for td in gama]
age = list(filter(None, age))

gama = beta.findAll('td',{'data-stat':'gs'})
gs = [td.text for td in gama]
gs = list(filter(None, gs))

target = pd.DataFrame(

{
'player_name':player,
'position':position,
'gs':gs,
'age':age
})

Anyone see where I'm going wrong? Or maybe an alternative way to go about it?

Answer 1

To get the content from that table you need to use any browser simulator cause the response of that portion is generated dynamically. Data from the first table can easily be accessible without any browser simulator, though. I tried selenium in this case:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
page_url = "https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/mia/2000_roster.htm"
driver.get(page_url)
soup = BeautifulSoup(driver.page_source, "lxml")
table = soup.select(".table_outer_container")[1]
for items in table.select("tr"):
    player = items.select("[data-stat='player']")[0].text
    gs = items.select("[data-stat='gs']")[0].text
    print(player,gs)

driver.quit()

Partial output:

Player? GS
Trace Armstrong* 0
John Bock 1
Tim Bowens 15
Lorenzo Bromell 0
Autry Denson 0
Mark Dixon 15
Kevin Donnalley 16

For some reason if you encounter such error, this time there will be no such option for that error either:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
page_url = "https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/mia/2000_roster.htm"
driver.get(page_url)
soup = BeautifulSoup(driver.page_source, "lxml")
table = soup.select(".table_outer_container")[1]
for items in table.select("tr"):
    player = items.select("[data-stat='player']")[0].text if items.select("[data-stat='player']") else ""
    gs = items.select("[data-stat='gs']")[0].text if items.select("[data-stat='gs']") else ""
    print(player,gs)

driver.quit()