How to write the output to html file with Python BeautifulSoup

Question

I modified an html file by removing some of the tags using beautifulsoup. Now I want to write the results back in a html file. My code:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from bs4 import Comment

soup = BeautifulSoup(open('1.html'),"html.parser")

[x.extract() for x in soup.find_all('script')]
[x.extract() for x in soup.find_all('style')]
[x.extract() for x in soup.find_all('meta')]
[x.extract() for x in soup.find_all('noscript')]
[x.extract() for x in soup.find_all(text=lambda text:isinstance(text, Comment))]
html =soup.contents
for i in html:
    print i

html = soup.prettify("utf-8")
with open("output1.html", "wb") as file:
    file.write(html)

Since I used soup.prettify, it generates html like this:

<p>
    <strong>
     BATAM.TRIBUNNEWS.COM, BINTAN
    </strong>
    - Tradisi pedang pora mewarnai serah terima jabatan pejabat di
    <a href="http://batam.tribunnews.com/tag/polres/" title="Polres">
     Polres
    </a>
    <a href="http://batam.tribunnews.com/tag/bintan/" title="Bintan">
     Bintan
    </a>
    , Senin (3/10/2016).
</p>

I want to get the result like print i does:

<p><strong>BATAM.TRIBUNNEWS.COM, BINTAN</strong> - Tradisi pedang pora mewarnai serah terima jabatan pejabat di <a href="http://batam.tribunnews.com/tag/polres/" title="Polres">Polres</a> <a href="http://batam.tribunnews.com/tag/bintan/" title="Bintan">Bintan</a>, Senin (3/10/2016).</p>
<p>Empat perwira baru Senin itu diminta cepat bekerja. Tumpukan pekerjaan rumah sudah menanti di meja masing masing.</p>

How can I get a result the same as print i (ie. so the tag and its content appear on the same line)? Thanks.

score 113 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 10 '16 at 14:39

113

Just convert the soup instance to string and write:

with open("output1.html", "w") as file:
    file.write(str(soup))

answered Nov 10 '16 at 14:39

alecxe

462,703
120
1,088
1,195

18

If you get encoding issues use this `with open("output1.html", "w", encoding='utf-8') as file:` – Oliver Oliver Oct 11 '19 at 02:05

score 40 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 22 '19 at 05:35

40

For Python 3, unicode was renamed to str, but I did have to pass in the encoding argument to opening the file to avoid an UnicodeEncodeError.

with open("output1.html", "w", encoding='utf-8') as file:
    file.write(str(soup))

answered Jun 22 '19 at 05:35

andytham

491
4
10

score 10 · Answer 3 · answered May 14 '18 at 08:47

10

Use unicode to be safe:

with open("output1.html", "w") as file:
    file.write(unicode(soup))

answered May 14 '18 at 08:47

spedy

2,200
25
26

3

For the benefit of future readers, as mentioned by @andytham, you can only use `unicode()` for Python 2; use `str()` instead for Python 3 – user5305519 Apr 14 '21 at 05:35

How to write the output to html file with Python BeautifulSoup

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