
        
        
            
                
                
                    my_html = """
<div>
    <p id="alex">Alex</p>
    <p class="Bob">Bob</p>
    <p id="cathy">Cathy</p>
</div>
"""
soup = BeautifulSoup(my_html, "html.parser")

Find by Tag Name

To return a list of all the <p> tags:


        
        
            
                
                
                    soup.find_all("p")
                
            
            [<p id="alex">Alex</p>, <p class="Bob">Bob</p>, <p id="cathy">Cathy</p>]

Find by Attribute

To find all tags with id="cathy":


        
        
            
                
                
                    soup.find_all(id="cathy")
                
            
            [<p id="cathy">Cathy</p>]

Find by Class

To find all tags with class="Bob":


        
        
            
                
                
                    soup.find_all(class_="Bob")
                
            
            [<p class="Bob">Bob</p>]

NOTE

Notice how we have to use class_ rather than class as it is a reserved word in Python.

Recursive

Consider the following HTML:


        
        
            
                
                
                    my_html = """
   <div id="people">
          <p>Alex</p>
          <div>
                 <p>Bob</p>
                 <p>Cathy</p>
          </div>
   <div>
"""

soup = BeautifulSoup(my_html)

To recursively look for <p> tags under the <div id="people">:


        
        
            
                
                
                    soup.find(id="people").find_all("p")
                
            
            [<p>Alex</p>, <p>Bob</p>, <p>Cathy</p>]

To only look for <p> tags directly under the <div id="people"> tag:


        
        
            
                
                
                    soup.find(id="people").find_all("p", recursive=False)
                
            
            [<p>Alex</p>]

Note that only the <p> tag that is a child of the <div id="people"> tag is returned.

Find by String

Reminder, here is the HTML we are working with:


        
        
            
                
                
                    my_html = """
<div>
    <p id="alex">Alex</p>
    <p class="Bob">Bob</p>
    <p id="cathy">Cathy</p>
</div>
"""
soup = BeautifulSoup(my_html, "html.parser")

To find all the strings "Alex" and "Cathy":


        
        
            
                
                
                    soup.find_all(string=["Alex", "Cathy"])
                
            
            ['Alex', 'Cathy']

Limit

To limit the number of returned results to 2:


        
        
            
                
                
                    soup.find_all("p", limit=2)
                
            
            [<p id="alex">Alex</p>, <p class="Bob">Bob</p>]

Note how we only return the first two <p> tags.

Getting all immediate children in Beautiful Soup

To get all immediate children in Beautiful Soup, use the find_all(recursive=False) method.

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Getting all child nodes in Beautiful Soup

To get all the child nodes of an element in Beautiful Soup, use the find_all() method.

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Finding elements using regular expression in Beautiful Soup

To find elements using regular expression, use the find_all(~) method and pass in the regular expression for the text parameter.

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