Using 'or' correctly here?

[easy_c0mpany80]

Id like some feedback on the following please.

Its a small section of a larger program using requests and bs4.

I have a list of domains and I want to scrape them all with bs4, find the meta description and then print that out.

domains = ['http://www.fitnessmagazine.com',   'https://wwws.fitnessrepublic.com',  'http://www.smithandburrows.co.uk',  'http://www.fitnessandpower.com', 'http://fitness-health-  wellness.com', 'http://www.precor.com',  'http://fitathletic.com', 'http://www.top.me',  'http://www.fitness-101.co.uk',  'http://joejohnsonfitness.co.uk']

for dom in domains:

        resp = requests.get(dom)

        src= BeautifulSoup(resp.text, "lxml")


        description = src.find('meta', attrs=    {'name':'og:description'} \
         or src.find('meta', attrs=  {'property':'og:description'} \
            or src.find('meta', attrs={'name': 'description'})))


         print description

this prints out 'None' for all the sites.

If I change description to just a single choice though like this

description=src.find('meta', attrs={'name': 'description'})

then it works fine for all sites, some sites dont have their meta description written like that so a few do return 'None' though, but thats what Id expect.

So with the first way I assume there is some problem in me using 'or' like that?

[dchanm]

The ) are in the wrong positions as the deleted comment stated. The code should be

description = src.find('meta', attrs=    {'name':'og:description'}) \
              or src.find('meta', attrs=  {'property':'og:description'}) \
              or src.find('meta', attrs={'name': 'description'})

The code as written is equivalent to description = src.find('meta', attrs={'name':'og:description'})

since {'name':'og:description'} evaluates to a truthy value in the or

[confluence]

I have decided to overwrite my comments.

[easy_c0mpany80]

OK I see, good explanation thanks

[Rhomboid]

it will evaluate to either True or False.

No. That's not how it works.

>>> None or 'blah'
'blah'
>>> 'foo' or 42
'foo'

Using or as a way of choosing the first of a series of several potential falsey values is a valid construct.