beautifulsoup: ImportError: No module named html.entities

Question

I am trying to get this module working on a server, and I am getting the error in the title:

My script:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

When I run it:

aclark@tycho ~ % python test.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 1, in <module>
    from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/bs4/__init__.py", line 30, in <module>
    from .builder import builder_registry, ParserRejectedMarkup
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/bs4/builder/__init__.py", line 4, in <module>
    from bs4.element import (
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/bs4/element.py", line 5, in <module>
    from bs4.dammit import EntitySubstitution
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/bs4/dammit.py", line 11, in <module>
    from html.entities import codepoint2name
ImportError: No module named html.entities

Now, I have seen ImportError: No module named html.entities

Which redirects me to http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/bs4/doc/#problems-after-installation

Based on that:

aclark@tycho ~ % sudo pip uninstall BeautifulSoup
Uninstalling BeautifulSoup:
  /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/BeautifulSoup-3.2.1-py2.7.egg-info
  /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/BeautifulSoup.py
  /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/BeautifulSoup.pyc
  /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/BeautifulSoupTests.py
  /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/BeautifulSoupTests.pyc
Proceed (y/n)? y
  Successfully uninstalled BeautifulSoup`

`aclark@tycho ~ % sudo pip install BeautifulSoup
Downloading/unpacking BeautifulSoup
  Running setup.py egg_info for package BeautifulSoup

Installing collected packages: BeautifulSoup
  Running setup.py install for BeautifulSoup

Successfully installed BeautifulSoup
Cleaning up...

No change in behaviour:

aclark@tycho ~ % python test.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "test.py", line 1, in <module>
    from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/bs4/__init__.py", line 30, in <module>
    from .builder import builder_registry, ParserRejectedMarkup
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/bs4/builder/__init__.py", line 4, in <module>
    from bs4.element import (
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/bs4/element.py", line 5, in <module>
    from bs4.dammit import EntitySubstitution
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/bs4/dammit.py", line 11, in <module>
    from html.entities import codepoint2name
ImportError: No module named html.entities

I have even removed python3 from the server incase that fixed it, but same problem.

Can anyone point me in a better direction that, uninstall, re-install?

How can I make sure that the code for version 2.7 is installed?

Cheers

Adam

Answer 1

I also met this problem.

At last, I found it's just because I have a file also named "html.py", in the same directory of the script file.

Therefore, when BeautifulSoup "from html.entities import codepoint2name", it throw exception......

Answer 2

I ran into a similar problem under different circumstances.

pip install future

Should do the trick. Check out http://python-future.org/standard_library_imports.html for more information.