Introduction to BeautifulSoup

BeautifulSoup is a Python library for parsing HTML and XML documents. It creates a parse tree that makes it easy to extract data.

Installing BeautifulSoup

pip install beautifulsoup4
pip install lxml  # Recommended parser

Creating a Soup Object

Basic Navigation

The find() Method

Find the first matching element:

The find_all() Method

Find all matching elements:

Extracting Text

Extracting Attributes

Navigating the Tree

Practical Example

Common Patterns

Key Takeaways

• BeautifulSoup parses HTML into a navigable tree
• Use find() for single element, find_all() for multiple
• Filter by tag name, class, id, or attributes
• .text gets text content, ['attr'] gets attributes
• Navigate with .parent, .children, .next_sibling
• Always check if elements exist before accessing properties