Last modified: Jul 04, 2023 By Alexander Williams

Beautifulsoup - Insert Element Before, After and Inside Tag

This tutorial will teach us how to insert an element before, after, and inside a tag. We will also learn how to insert an element for multiple tags.

Insert an Element Before a Tag

We'll use the insert_before() method to insert an element before a tag. This method inserts elements or strings immediately before a specific tag.

Let's see an example of inserting  an <h1> element before a <p> tag:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

html = """
<div id="content">
    <p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</div>
"""

# Create a BeautifulSoup object and specify the parser
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')

# Find the <p> tag
p_tag = soup.find('p')

# Create a new <h1> tag
new_tag = soup.new_tag('h1')

# Set the string content of the <h1> tag
new_tag.string = 'New Heading'

# Insert the new <h1> tag before the <p> tag
p_tag.insert_before(new_tag)

# Print the modified HTML
print(soup.prettify())

Output:

<div id="content">
 <h1>
  New Heading
 </h1>
 <p>
  This is a paragraph.
 </p>
</div>

However, to insert before a tag, we need first create a new element and then insert it into the specific tag.

Insert an Element after a Tag

Similarly, use the insert_after(tag) method to insert an element after a tag. For example, let's insert a <div> tag after the <p> tag:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# HTML content as a string
html = """
<div id="content">
    <p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</div>
"""

# Create a BeautifulSoup object
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')

# Find the <div> tag
div_tag = soup.find('div')

# Create a new <div> tag
new_div_tag = soup.new_tag('div')

# Set the string content of the new <div> tag
new_div_tag.string = 'New Div Content'

# Insert the new <div> tag after the existing <div> tag
div_tag.insert_after(new_div_tag)

# Print the modified HTML
print(soup.prettify())

Output:

<div id="content">
 <p>
  This is a paragraph.
 </p>
</div>
<div>
 New Div Content
</div>

Insert an Element Inside a Tag

To insert an element inside a specific tag, Use the append method. For example, let's insert an <a> tag with a link inside the existing <p> tag:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# HTML content
html = """
<div id="content">
    <p>This is a paragraph.</p>
</div>
"""

# Create a BeautifulSoup object
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')

# Find the <p> tag
p_tag = soup.find('p')

# Create a new <a> tag with an href attribute
new_a_tag = soup.new_tag('a', href='https://example.com')

# Set the string content of the new <a> tag
new_a_tag.string = 'Click here'

# Append the new <a> tag as a child of the <p> tag
p_tag.append(new_a_tag)

# Print the modified HTML
print(soup.prettify())

Output:

<div id="content">
 <p>
  This is a paragraph.
  <a href="https://example.com">
   Click here
  </a>
 </p>
</div>

Insert an element tag into multiple tags

To insert into multiple tags, we need to follow these steps:

  1. Find all the target tag
  2. Iterate over each tag in the list.
  3. Create a new element and append it to each tag.

The below code will insert a new <p> tag with the text "New paragraph" appended to each existing <div> tag:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# HTML content as a string
html = """
<div>
<p>Text 1</p>
</div>

<div>
<p>Text 2</p>
</div>
"""

# Create a BeautifulSoup object
soup = BeautifulSoup(html, 'html.parser')

# Find all <div> tags
div_tags = soup.find_all('div')

# Iterate over each <div> tag
for div_tag in div_tags:
    # Create a new <p> tag
    new_p_tag = soup.new_tag('p')
    # Set the string content of the new <p> tag
    new_p_tag.string = 'New paragraph'
    # Append the new <p> tag as a child of the current <div> tag
    div_tag.append(new_p_tag)

# Print the modified HTML
print(soup.prettify())

Output:

<div>
 <p>
  Text 1
 </p>
 <p>
  New paragraph
 </p>
</div>
<div>
 <p>
  Text 2
 </p>
 <p>
  New paragraph
 </p>
</div>

If you want to find by class or ID, you can refer to the following articles Find elements by ID BeautifulSoupFind Element by class in Beautifulsoup.

Conclusion

We could easily modify HTML documents by utilizing Beautiful Soup's methods, such as insert_before, insert_after, and append.

These operations allow for precise manipulation of HTML structures, conveniently adding new elements and customising the document according to our needs.