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I am having some problems with navigablestrings and unicode in BeautifulSoup (python).

Basically, I am parsing four results pages from youtube, and putting the top result's extension (end of the url after youtube.com/watch?=) into a list.

I then loop the list in two other functions, on one, it throws this error: TypeError: 'NavigableString' object is not callable . However, the other one says TypeError: 'unicode' object is not callable . Both are using the same exact string.

What am I doing wrong here? I know that my parsing code is probably not perfect, I'm using both BeautifulSoup and regex. In the past whenever I get NavigableString errors, I have just thrown in a ".encode('ascii', 'ignore') or simply str(), and that has seemed to work. Any help would be appreciated!

    for url in urls:
        response = urllib2.urlopen(url)
        html = response.read()
        soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
        link_data = soup.findAll("a", {"class":"yt-uix-tile-link result-item-translation-title"})[0]
        ext = re.findall('href="/(.*)">', str(link_data))[0]
        if isinstance(ext, str):
            exts.append('http://www.youtube.com/'+ext.replace(' ',''))
and then:
    for ext in exts:
        description = description(ext)
        embed = embed(ext)
i only added the isinstance() lines to try and see what the problem was. When 'str' is changed to 'unicode', the exts list is empty (meaning they are strings, not unicode (or even navigablestrings?)). I'm quite confused...
                i only added the isinstance() lines to try and see what the problem was. When 'str' is changed to 'unicode', the exts list is empty (meaning they are strings, not unicode (or even navigablestrings?)). I'm quite confused...
– Kurt J
                Jun 10, 2012 at 4:52
                @user1446940 if any of the answers helped to solve your problem, don't forget to upvote/accept the answer.. here is more on why and how: meta.stackexchange.com/a/5235/142717
– Lipis
                Jun 21, 2012 at 14:27
                I'm sorry, this probably seems so incredibly easy to fix, but I don't think I understand this entirely. Why would the function be replaced by a string? Shouldn't description just be updated each time? I'm almost certain you're right, since only the first time through produces output. Thanks for the quick response
– Kurt J
                Jun 10, 2012 at 5:40
                @user1446940: there is no separate namespace for functions in Python. A name refers to the last object bound to it to e.g., def f(): "f is a function; you can call it" ...later... f = 1 henceforth f is an integer; you can't call it. (it is a simplified picture that ignores scoping issues)
– jfs
                Jun 10, 2012 at 6:01
description() and embed() are function.  For example
def description():  #this is a function
    return u'result'
description = description(ext) 
#now description is a unicode object, and it is not callable.
#It is can't call like this description(ext) again
I think those two function description() and embed() are return 'NavigableString' object and 'unicode' object. Those two object are not callable.
So you should repalce those two line , such as:
for ext in exts:
    description_result = description(ext)
    embed_result = embed(ext)
        
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