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Beautiful Soup | insert_before method

schedule Aug 12, 2023
Last updated
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PythonBeautiful Soup
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Beautiful Soup's insert_before(~) method inserts the specified tag or string directly before a particular element in the parse tree.

Parameters

1. string or Tag | string or Tag

The string or Tag to insert into the parse tree.

Examples

Consider the following HTML document:

my_html = """
   <div>
      <p>Alex</p>
      <p id="bob">Bob</p>
      <p>Cathy</p>
   </div>
"""
soup = BeautifulSoup(my_html)

To insert a string right before the tag containing Alex:

div_tag = soup.find("div")
alex_tag = div_tag.find("p")
alex_tag.insert_before("INSERTEDTEXT")
print(div_tag)
<div>
INSERTEDTEXT<p>Alex</p>
<p id="bob">Bob</p>
<p>Cathy</p>
</div>

To insert a new tag right before the tag containing Alex:

div_tag = soup.find("div")
alex_tag = div_tag.find("p")

# Create a new tag and initialise it's content
new_tag = soup.new_tag("p")
new_tag.string = "Eric"

alex_tag.insert_before(new_tag)
print(div_tag)
<div>
<p>Eric</p><p>Alex</p>
<p id="bob">Bob</p>
<p>Cathy</p>
</div>
robocat
Published by Arthur Yanagisawa
Edited by 0 others
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