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Search and Replace in HTML with BeautifulSoup

Answer 1

+2 A:

This will insert a   tag after the end of each <a>...</a> element:

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup, Tag

# ....

soup = BeautifulSoup(data)
for a in soup.findAll('a'):
    a.parent.insert(a.parent.index(a)+1, Tag(soup, 'br'))

You can't use soup.findAll(tag = '</a>') because BeautifulSoup doesn't operate on the end tags separately - they are considered part of the same element.

If you wanted to put the <a> elements inside a  element as you ask in a comment, you can use this:

for a in soup.findAll('a'):
    p = Tag(soup, 'p') #create a P element
    a.replaceWith(p)   #Put it where the A element is
    p.insert(0, a)     #put the A element inside the P (between <p> and </p>)

Again, you don't create the  and  separately because they are part of the same thing.

interjay 2010-01-15 17:56:09

Will that add it to every opening <a> tag as well?

Kevin 2010-01-15 17:57:44

See my edit - It will be added after the whole <a>...</a> element, so effectively, it will be only after the </a>.

interjay 2010-01-15 17:59:25

Is BeautifulSoup.Tag valid? I am getting an error when trying this code.

Kevin 2010-01-15 20:43:09

It depends on how you import the module. I edited to show one way it can work - try it now.

interjay 2010-01-15 21:38:48

Answer 2

+1 A:

You don't replace an end-tag; in BeautifulSoup you are dealing with a document object model like in a browser, not a string full of HTML. So you couldn't ‘replace’ an end-tag without also replacing the start-tag.

What you want to do is insert a new   element immediately after the <a>...</a> element. To do so you'll need to find out the index of the <a> element inside its parent element, and insert the new element just after that index. eg.

soup= BeautifulSoup('<body>blah <a href="foo">blah</a> blah</body>')
for link in soup.findAll('a'):
    br= Tag(soup, 'br')
    index= link.parent.contents.index(link)
    link.parent.insert(index+1, br)
# soup now serialises to '<body>blah <a href="foo">blah</a><br /> blah</body>'

bobince 2010-01-15 17:57:23

Would I be able to add tags before with a -1. Say I wanted to do and . Could I but the before using index -1 and after using +1?

Kevin 2010-01-15 20:30:19

You'd add an element *before* the chosen element using just `index`, not plus or minus anything.

bobince 2010-01-15 22:04:17

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Search and Replace in HTML with BeautifulSoup

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