select method for getting tags having CSS

By using select method we can run a CSS selector and get all matching elements. We can find tags also by using select method.

import requests
link = "https://www.plus2net.com/html_tutorial/html_form.php"
content = requests.get(link)

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(content.text, 'html.parser')

print(soup.select("title"))

Output

[<title>Web Form tag  elements in HTML</title>]

All meta tags available within HEAD tag

print(soup.select("head meta"))

Tags with class='table-striped'

print(soup.select('.table-striped'))

All the links inside class='table-striped'

print(soup.select(".table-striped a"))

All links even list

print(soup.select("a:nth-of-type(even)"))

Odd list

print(soup.select("a:nth-of-type(odd)"))

print(soup.select("a:nth-of-type(2n)"))

Example

We can use class name, id , tag with class , tag with id etc.

content = """<h2>List of web programming languages</h2>
<div class=my_list>
<p>My Pages one </p>
<p class=my_pages>My Pages </p>
<p id=ck1>My ck1 page</p>
<a href='https://www.plus2net.com' class='home_link'>Home page</a>
</div>"""

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(content, 'html.parser')

print(soup.select("div")) # all div tags

We will get all div tags in above code.
Let us collect tag having class=my_list

print(soup.select('.my_list')) # class=my_list

Print tags with class=my_pages

print(soup.select('.my_pages')) # class=my_pages

Output

[<p class="my_pages">My Pages </p>]

Print tags with id

print(soup.select('#ck1'))

Output

[<p id="ck1">My ck1 page</p>]

Print all a tags within the class=home_link

[<a class="home_link" href="https://www.plus2net.com">Home page</a>]

Print all <p>

print(soup.select('p')) # all p tags

Output

[<p>My Pages one </p>, <p class="my_pages">My Pages </p>, 
<p id="ck1">My ck1 page</p>]

All <p> tags having class

print(soup.select('p[class]'))

Output

[<p class="my_pages">My Pages </p>]

All <p> tags having id

print(soup.select('p[id]'))

Output

[<p id="ck1">My ck1 page</p>]

Find HTML Table with width="170", then collect the 2nd and 3rd <td> tag value

str1=soup.select('table[width="170"] td')
print(str1[1].string)
print(str1[2].string)

select_one

Print only the first <p> tag

print(soup.select_one('p')) # the first p tag only.

Output

<p>My Pages one </p>

Using CSS selector for XML

Try using this code to get mtaching XML tags with details.

To read XML files

pip install lxml

import requests
link = "https://www.plus2net.com/php_tutorial/file-xml-demo.xml"

content = requests.get(link)

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(content.text, "xml")

print(soup.select("name"))

Output ( sample output )

[<name>John Deo</name>, <name>Max Ruin</name>, 
------
------
<name>Rows Noump</name>]

BeautifulSoup children and parent tags Python- Tutorials

Subhendu Mohapatra

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select : CSS selector method

Example

select_one

Using CSS selector for XML

Subhendu Mohapatra