CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python-3.xbeautifulsoup
user3525290
user3525290

Reputation: 1607

Insert HTML into an element with BeautifulSoup

When I try to insert the following HTML into an element

<div class="frontpageclass"><h3 id="feature_title">The Title</h3>... </div>

bs4 is replacing it like this:

<div class="frontpageclass">&lt;h3 id="feature_title"&gt;The Title &lt;/h3&gt;... &lt;div&gt;</div>

I am using string and it is still messing up the format. 

with open(html_frontpage) as fp:
   soup = BeautifulSoup(fp,"html.parser")

found_data = soup.find(class_= 'front-page__feature-image')
found_data.string = databasedata

If I try to use found_data.string.replace_with I get a NoneType error. found_data is of type tag.

similar issue but they are using div, not class

Upvotes: 5

Views: 4552

Answers (2)

Fanghaozhi Daniel Liang
Fanghaozhi Daniel Liang

Reputation: 1

For the messing format, there are only & lt; and & gt; corresponding to '<' and '>'. Just replace all of them should work.

eg. suppose beautifulsoup inserts html tag into soup1 variable with messing format: a=str(soup1).replace(& lt;,'<').replace(& gt;,'>'); print(a)

In real code, one should put & lt; inside ' ' and no space in between. (Here, web displays & lt; with no space same as <)

So variable a should work with correct format.

Upvotes: 0

Tomalak
Tomalak

Reputation: 338158

Setting the element .text or .string causes the value to be HTML-encoded, which is the right thing to do. It ensures that the text you insert will appear 1:1 when the document is displayed in a browser.

If you want to insert actual HTML, you need to insert new nodes into the tree. 

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# always define a file encoding when working with text files
with open(html_frontpage, encoding='utf8') as fp:
    soup = BeautifulSoup(fp, "html.parser")

target = soup.find(class_= 'front-page__feature-image')

# empty out the target element if needed
target.clear()

# create a temporary document from your HTML
content = '<div class="frontpageclass"><h3 id="feature_title">The Title</h3>...</div>'
temp = BeautifulSoup(content)

# the nodes we want to insert are children of the <body> in `temp`
nodes_to_insert = temp.find('body').children

# insert them, in source order
for i, node in enumerate(nodes_to_insert):
    target.insert(i, node)

Upvotes: 8

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