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Practice

Key Methods and Usage of BeautifulSoup

In this lesson, we will look at the key methods of BeautifulSoup and how to use them with some simple examples.


Finding a Specific Element with find​

To find a specific element on a web page, you can use the find() method.

This method returns the first element that meets the criteria.

Example Usage of find Method
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

html_doc = """
<html><body>
<h1>Hello</h1>
<p>Paragraph 1</p>
<p>Paragraph 2</p>
</body></html>
"""

# Parse the HTML
soup = BeautifulSoup(html_doc, 'html.parser')

# Find the h1 tag
h1_tag = soup.find('h1')

# Output: Hello
print(h1_tag.text)

In the example above, it finds the h1 tag and prints its content.

find() always returns only the first matching element, so if there are multiple elements, only the first one is returned.


Finding Multiple Elements with find_all​

If you want to find all elements that meet the criteria, use the find_all() method.

This method returns the results as a list, allowing you to handle multiple elements at once.

Example Usage of find_all Method
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

html_doc = """
<html><body>
<p>Paragraph 1</p>
<p>Paragraph 2</p>
<p>Paragraph 3</p>
</body></html>
"""

# Parse the HTML
soup = BeautifulSoup(html_doc, 'html.parser')

# Find all p tags
p_tags = soup.find_all('p')

# Print all p tags
for p in p_tags:
    # Output: Paragraph 1, Paragraph 2, Paragraph 3
    print(p.text)

This code finds and prints all p tags in the string held by the html_doc variable.

The p_tags variable holds the values of the p tags in a list like ['Paragraph 1', 'Paragraph 2', 'Paragraph 3'].

Thus, find_all() is useful when you want to find multiple elements at once.


Finding Elements Using CSS Selectors with select​

To select a specific element using CSS selectors, use select().

Example Usage of select Method
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

html_doc = """
<html><body>
<p>Paragraph 1</p>
<div class="content">
    <p>Paragraph 2</p>
    <p>Paragraph 3</p>
</div>
</body></html>
"""

# Parse the HTML
soup = BeautifulSoup(html_doc, 'html.parser')

# Find all p tags within .content class
content_p_tags = soup.select('.content p')
for p in content_p_tags:
    # Output: Paragraph 2, Paragraph 3
    print(p.text)

This code selects and prints all p tags within the .content class.


Selecting the First Element with select_one​

The select_one() method is similar to select(), but it returns only the first element that meets the criteria.

Example Usage of select_one() Method
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

html_doc = """
<html><body>
<div class="content">
    <p>Paragraph 1</p>
    <p>Paragraph 2</p>
</div>
</body></html>
"""

# Parse the HTML
soup = BeautifulSoup(html_doc, 'html.parser')

# Find the first p tag within .content class
first_p_tag = soup.select_one('.content p')

# Output: Paragraph 1
print(first_p_tag.text)

In the above example, it finds and prints the first p tag within the .content class.

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