Help with scraping tide info from website

Configuration
1

Hi,

I’ve been trying to create a couple of sensors showing the next high and low tides at my location but after a few hours trying several combinations I’m yet to succeed in scraping the correct data:

The page I’m trying to extract this from:

Carcavelos Tide Times & Tide Charts

I’m attempting to extract only the time for the next high tide and next low tide (creating 2 sensors for this).

The CSS selector for each value seems to be clearly defined - 'hightime" and “lowtime” - but I can’t get any value back:

the relevant html code:

<p class="high-tide">Next <b><span class="tide"><i class="fa fa-arrow-up"></i>high tide</span> in Sao Domingos de Rana</b> is at <b><span id="hightime" class="tide">4:54 AM</span></b>, which is in <b><span class="tide"><span id="highcountdown">11 hr 48 min 26 s</span> from now</span></b>.</p>

sensor:
  - platform: scrape
    resource: http://www.surf-forecast.com/breaks/Carcavelos/tides/latest
    name: Next High Tide
    select: "#hightime"
    scan_interval: 3600

I have tried a various combinations for the “select” value:

"#hightime.tide"
".high-tide #hightime.tide"
".high-tide b:nth-child(2) #hightime"

…and so on.

Most of the times I can’t get any value back - been at it for quite a while; debugger seems to return the entire html code of the page in the log.

Any ideas and/or help would be greatly appreciated.

2

I’m not a big fan of scraping data you get it working then they change the format …

There are some free tide apis you could call with a rest sensor, might be worth a look.

Search free tide api and see if there’s any that cover your area.

3

I guess they can change the format of an API as much as they can a website but I agree with you, I would rather use an API as well; In fact, there are a few API’s I would like to use but I have no idea how. The scraper was fairly easy to get started and I’m just intrigued why I can’t get this to work - I’ve managed to figure out a bunch of others.

Is there a guide for complete noobs on where to start in using API’s with Home assistant? I’ve had a looked at the rest sensor but the guide in the official docs is far from clear for someone who does not know where to start.

4

bumping it in the hope someone can help with this…