How to insert a new tag into a BeautifulSoup object?

Last Updated : 16 Mar, 2021

In this article, we will see how to insert a new tag into a BeautifulSoup object. See the below examples to get a better idea about the topic.

Example:

HTML_DOC :

“””

<html>

<head>

<title> Table Data </title>

</head>

<body>

<div> This is sample div 1 </div>

<div> This is sample div 2 </div>

</body>

</html>

“””

new_tag : <div> This is new div </div>

Modified BeautifulSoup Object :

“””

<html>

<head>

<title> Table Data </title>

</head>

<body>

<div> This is sample div 1 </div>

<div> This is sample div 2 </div>

<div> This is new div </div>

</body>

</html>

“””

Required Modules:

BeautifulSoup (bs4): It is a Python library for pulling data out of HTML and XML files. This module does not come built-in with Python. Run the following command in the terminal to install this library-

pip install bs4
or
pip install beautifulsoup4

Creating a new tag using new_tag() method :

A new tag can be created by calling BeautifulSoup’s inbuilt function new_tag().

Inserting a new tag using the append() method :

The new tag is appended to the end of the parent tag.

Python3

# Import Module 
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup 
  
# HTML Document 
HTML_DOC = """ 
              <html> 
               <head> 
                   <title> Add new Tag </title> 
               </head> 
               <body> 
                    <div> This is sample div 1 </div> 
                    <div> This is sample div 2 </div> 
               </body> 
             </html> 
            """
  
# Function to append new tag 
def addTag(html): 
  
    # parse html content 
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser") 
  
    # create new tag 
    # Here we are creating a new div 
    new_div = soup.new_tag("div") 
  
    # Adding content to div 
    new_div.string = " This is new div "
  
    # Appending new div to html tree 
    soup.html.body.append(new_div) 
  
    # Printing the modified object 
    print(soup) 
  
  
# Function Call 
addTag(HTML_DOC) 

Output:

Inserting a new tag using insert() method :

Using this method, the new tag is not appended to the end of the parent tag but is inserted at a given numeric position. It works the same as the .insert() method of the Python list. For example, if we want to insert the new div between div 1 and div 2, we can use

soup.html.body.insert(2, new_div)

This would insert the new div at position 2 i.e, between the old 2 divs.

Python3

# Import Module 
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup 
  
# HTML Document 
HTML_DOC = """ 
              <html> 
               <head> 
                   <title> Add new Tag </title> 
               </head> 
               <body> 
                    <div> This is sample div 1 </div> 
                    <div> This is sample div 2 </div> 
               </body> 
             </html> 
            """
  
# Function to inset new tag 
def addTag(html): 
  
    # parse html content 
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser") 
  
    # create new tag 
    # Here we are creating a new div 
    new_div = soup.new_tag("div") 
  
    # Adding content to div 
    new_div.string = " This is new div "
  
    # Inserting new div to html tree 
    # Here, 2 represents the position 
    # where we want to insert the new tag 
    soup.html.body.insert(2, new_div) 
  
    # Printing the modified object 
    print(soup) 
  
  
# Function Call 
addTag(HTML_DOC) 

Output:

Inserting a new tag using insert_before() method :

insert_before() method is used to insert a new tag just before the given tag.

Python3

# Import Module 
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup 
  
# HTML Document 
HTML_DOC = """ 
              <html> 
               <head> 
                   <title> Add new Tag </title> 
               </head> 
               <body> 
                    <div> This is sample div 1 </div> 
                    <div> This is sample div 2 </div> 
               </body> 
             </html> 
            """
  
# Function to insert new tag before given tag 
def addTag(html): 
  
    # parse html content 
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser") 
  
    # create new tag 
    # Here we are creating a new div 
    new_div_before = soup.new_tag("div") 
  
    # Adding content to div 
    new_div_before.string = " This is new div before div 1 "
  
    # Inserting new tag before div 1 
    soup.html.body.div.insert_before(new_div_before) 
  
    # Printing the modified object 
    print(soup) 
  
  
# Function Call 
addTag(HTML_DOC) 

Output:

Inserting a new tag using insert_after() method :

insert_after() method is used to insert a new tag just after the given tag.

Python3

# Import Module 
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup 
  
# HTML Document 
HTML_DOC = """ 
              <html> 
               <head> 
                   <title> Add new Tag </title> 
               </head> 
               <body> 
                    <div> This is sample div 1 </div> 
                    <div> This is sample div 2 </div> 
               </body> 
             </html> 
            """
  
# Function to insert new tag after given tag 
def addTag(html): 
  
    # parse html content 
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser") 
  
    # create new tag 
    # Here we are creating a new div 
    new_div_after = soup.new_tag("div") 
  
    # Adding content to div 
    new_div_after.string = " This is new div after div 1 "
  
    # Inserting new tag after div 1 
    soup.html.body.div.insert_after(new_div_after) 
  
    # Printing the modified object 
    print(soup) 
  
  
# Function Call 
addTag(HTML_DOC) 