Changes 12/12/13

NSF:

• Improved the python file to parse the actual html of the database search page
• Running the program (user input in italics and my comments in bold):

• Insert your search terms: National Science Foundation
  Insert your tag: GOVT 

  After entering the search term and tag, the program outputs a useable url
  http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=GOVT%2F%22National+Science+Foundation%22&d=PG01 

  It then parses the HTML from any <a> element in the <table> that holds all the data into a list 

  20130333037
  METHODS, SYSTEMS, AND MEDIA FOR DETECTING COVERT MALWARE\n
  20130332859
  METHOD AND USER INTERFACE FOR CREATING AN ANIMATED COMMUNICATION\n

  ...

  20130314948
  Multi-Phase Grid Interface\n
  20130314717
  METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR LASER SCANNING STRUCTURED ILLUMINATION\n     MICROSCOPY AND TOMOGRAPHY\n
   

• The program makes use of python's html.parser library
• So far, it just outputs the name and number of each item in the dataset as a separate list item. Although the program doesn't do much now, it demonstrates successfully parsing and displaying data gathered from the html page 
• I'm not sure why it has odd formatting such as line breaks and white space, but I guess that is just part of the page parsing from the database.