How to Get href of Element using BeautifulSoup [Easily]

• Last modified: 04 December 2020
• Category: python libraries

In this article, we're going to learn how to get the href attribute of an element by using python BeautifulSoup.

1. Getting all href attributes

In the first example, we'll get all elements that have a href attribute.

syntax:

soup.find_all(href=True)

Example

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

html_source = '''
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/theme/css/bootstrap.min.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/theme/css/style.css">

    <div>
       <a class="mode" href="https://pytutorial.com"><p>Converting File Size in Python</p></a>
       <a href="https://ex.com/home"><p>Converting File Size in Python</p></a>
    </div>   
'''


soup = BeautifulSoup(html_source, 'html.parser')

find_all_a = soup.find_all(href=True)
print(find_all_a)

output

[<link href="/theme/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>, <link href="/theme/css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>, <a class="mode" href="https://pytutorial.com"><p>Converting File Size in Python</p></a>, <a href="https://ex.com/home"><p>Converting File Size in Python</p></a>]

As you can see, we got <link> and <a> elements.

Now, to get href content, we need first iterate over the result's list then use the following syntax.

syntax:

el['href']

example:

for el in find_all_a:
    print(el['href'])

output

/theme/css/bootstrap.min.css
/theme/css/style.css
https://pytutorial.com
https://ex.com/home  

2. Getting href of <a> tag

Let's say we want to get href of <a> elements.

syntax:

soup.find_all("a", href=True)

Example:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

html_source = '''
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/theme/css/bootstrap.min.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/theme/css/style.css">

    <div>
       <a class="mode" href="https://pytutorial.com"><p>Converting File Size in Python</p></a>
       <a href="https://ex.com/home"><p>Converting File Size in Python</p></a>
    </div>   
'''

soup = BeautifulSoup(html_source, 'html.parser')

find_all_a = soup.find_all("a", href=True)

for el in find_all_a:
    print(el['href'])

output

https://pytutorial.com
https://ex.com/home

Let me explain.

1. find all elements that have <a> tag and href attribute.
2. iterate over the result.
3. print href by using el['href'].