Django – UnboundLocalError: local variable 'image_link' referenced before assignment

I have written a function for parsing news articles feeds.

def save_new_articles(feed, source_id, category_id):
    channel_feed_title = feed.channel.title.title()
    channel_feed_link = feed.channel.link
    channel_feed_desc = feed.channel.description
    official_source_id = source_id
    post_category_id = category_id

    for item in feed.entries:
        parsed_summary = item.summary
        soup = BeautifulSoup(parsed_summary, 'lxml')
        images = soup.findAll('img')
        for image in images:
            image_url_link = (image['src'])
            if image_url_link is not None:
                image_link = image_url_link
            else:
                image_link = "https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/280000/velka/not-found-image-15383864787lu.jpg"

        parsed_title = item.title
        formatted = re.sub("<.*?>", "", parsed_title)
        post_title = formatted

        post_link = item.link

        description = item.description
        output_summary = re.sub("<.*?>", "", description)

        title = item.title
        capital = title.title()
        tags = capital.split()

        date_published = parser.parse(item.published)

        if not Posts.objects.filter(guid=item.guid).exists():
            post = Posts(
                title = post_title,
                link = post_link,
                summary = output_summary,
                image_url = image_link,
                tags = tags,
                pub_date = date_published,
                guid = item.guid,
                feed_title = channel_feed_title,
                feed_link = channel_feed_link,
                feed_description = channel_feed_desc,
                source_id = official_source_id,
                category_id = post_category_id
            )
            post.save()
            
        else:
            logger.info("Duplicate Post Detected! Skipping...")

But upon running the code I get:

image_url = image_link,
UnboundLocalError: local variable 'image_link' referenced before assignment

I don’t understand where the error is coming from seeing as I had defined image_link in the image for loop statement above. I have checked similar answers on SO but I don’t seem to find a suitable answer. Please help me debug this.

>Solution :

This error happens when images (which you initialise with soup.findAll('img')) are empty.

Possibly you don’t only have item.summary without img tags, but it also could be just empty due to some previous error.

Thereby to fix your code you should just init image_link before this:

if not Posts.objects.filter(guid=item.guid).exists():

with your, as I assume, default value:

image_link = "https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/280000/velka/not-found-image-15383864787lu.jpg"

For example, like this, instead of:

        for image in images:
            image_url_link = (image['src'])
            if image_url_link is not None:
                image_link = image_url_link
            else:
                image_link = "https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/280000/velka/not-found-image-15383864787lu.jpg"

you can go this way:

        image_link = "https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/280000/velka/not-found-image-15383864787lu.jpg"
        for image in images:
            image_url_link = (image['src'])
            if image_url_link is not None:
                image_link = image_url_link