Beautiful Soup - replace_with() Method

Method Description

Beautiful Soup's replace_with() method replaces a tag or string in an element with the provided tag or string.

Syntax

replace_with(tag/string)

Parameters

The method accepts a tag object or a string as argument.

Return Type

The replace_method doesn't return a new object.

Example 1

In this example, the <p> tag is replaced by <b> with the use of replace_with() method.

html = '''
<html>
   <body>
      <p>The quick, brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.</p>
   </body>
</html>
'''
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser")
tag1 = soup.find('p')
txt = tag1.string
tag2 = soup.new_tag('b')
tag2.string = txt
tag1.replace_with(tag2)
print (soup)

Output

<html>
<body>
<b>The quick, brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.</b>
</body>
</html>

Example 2

You can simply replace the inner text of a tag with another string by calling replace_with() method on the tag.string object.

html = '''
<html>
   <body>
      <p>The quick, brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.</p>
   </body>
</html>
'''
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser")
tag1 = soup.find('p')
tag1.string.replace_with("DJs flock by when MTV ax quiz prog.")
print (soup)

Output

<html>
<body>
<p>DJs flock by when MTV ax quiz prog.</p>
</body>
</html>

Example 3

The tag object to be used for replacement can be obtained by any of the find() methods. Here, we replace the text of the tag next to <p> tag.

html = '''
<html>
   <body>
      <p>The quick, <b>brown</b> fox jumps over a lazy dog.</p>
   </body>
</html>
'''
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser")
tag1 = soup.find('p')
tag1.find_next('b').string.replace_with('black')
print (soup)

Output

<html>
<body>
<p>The quick, <b>black</b> fox jumps over a lazy dog.</p>
</body>
</html>
Advertisements