Develop Reference

Installation of beautifulsoup

I am using Python 2.7.13
I have used the command prompt to install beautifulsoup : easy_install beautifulsoup4
I got messages with a best match', 'downloading ..... etc and finally an error:None.
However when running a script which says
from BeautifulSoup import *
I got the error message
ImportError: No module named BeautifulSoup
does the error: None mean it has installed properly
what does it actually do when you install beautifulsoup, is it there forever? Do you need to install it each time you use Python? Where does it install it to i.e. where should I check to see if its actually there ?
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup also gives the same answer

You can install Beautiful Soup with PIP(python package index)
pip install beautifulsoup4

ImportError: No module named bs4?

I try to import library: from bs4 import BeautifulSoup.
When I run script I get error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "index.py", line 9, in <module>
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
ImportError: No module named bs4
root#srvr [/home/public_html/grabber/similar]#
When I try install:
pip install beautifulsoup4
I get the following error:
Requirement already satisfied: beautifulsoup4 in /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/beautifulsoup4-4.5.1-py2.6.egg
Script is:
import sys
sys.path.append('/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages')
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

You installed BeautifulSoup for Python 2.6, but according to your tag, you are using Python 3.x. To install explicitly for Python 3, use pip3 instead of pip, i.e.
pip3 install beautifulsoup4

If you try this on Mac OS X do the following:
Go to the official website: http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/
Download the .tar.gz package
Unpack it
Go to the unpacked folder
Type: python setup.py install

If you use Pycharm, go to preferences - project interpreter - install bs4. If you try to install BeautifulSoup, it will still show that no module named bs4.

ImportError: No module named bs4 in Windows

I am trying to create a script to download the captcha from my website.
I think the code works except from that error, when I run it in cmd (I am using windows not Linux) I receive the following:
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
ImportError: No module named bs4
I tried using pip install BeautifulSoup4
but then I receive a syntax error at install.
Here is the script:
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import urllib2
import urllib
url = "https://example.com"
content = urllib2.urlopen(url)
soup = BeautifulSoup(content)
img = soup.find('img',id ='imgCaptcha')
print img
urllib.urlretrieve(urlparse.urljoin(url, img['src']), 'captcha.bmp')
The problem according to this answer must be due to the fact I have not activated the virtualenv, and THEN install BeautifulSoup4.
I don't think this information will be of any help but I saved my python text in a notepad.py and the run it using cmd.

I had the same problem until a moment ago. Thanks for the post and comments! According to #Martin Vseticka 's suggestion I checked if I have the pip.exe file in my python folders. I run python 2.7 and 3.7 simultaneously. I didn't have it in the python 2.7 folder but in the 3.7.
So in the command line I changed the directory to where the pip.exe file was located. Then I ran "pip install BeautifulSoup4" and it worked. See enclosed screen shot.

I did a fresh install of Python 3.5 on my Windows 8.1 (64b) machine and then run:
C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32\Scripts>pip install b
eautifulsoup4
Collecting beautifulsoup4
Downloading beautifulsoup4-4.4.1-py3-none-any.whl (81kB)
100% |################################| 81kB 890kB/s
Installing collected packages: beautifulsoup4
Successfully installed beautifulsoup4-4.4.1
and then run:
C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python35-32>python test.py
test.py contains only:
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
I received no error.

I could install bs4, but still got an error message like yours. My operation system is 64 bit, and I only had this issue after I installed the latest Python in "32 bit" version. So I removed the 32 bit one, then I can import the bs4 again, and it still works after I install the latest Python in 64 version. Hope it helps.

I have python3.7 32bit and python3.7 64 bit installed on Windows 10.
For this app, I am using the 32 bit version.
I was getting the following error:
ImportError: No module named bs4
when I was trying to 'import bs4' from my app.py. Someone said: "Make sure your pip and your python are both 32 bits", but omitted to explicitly say how, so here it is:
Delete your virtual environment if it exists.
Create a new venv using python -m venv venv, but explicitly call it from your 32bit python directory like this:
C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\python -m venv my_venv
install the requirements by explicitly calling the 32bit version like this:
C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37-32\Scripts\pip install -r requirements.txt
That's it. I hope it works.

Importing bs4 in Python 3.5

I have installed both Python 3.5 and Beautifulsoup4. When I try to import bs4, I get the error below. Is there any fix for that? Or should I just install Python 3.4 instead?
Please be very explicit - I am new to programming. Many thanks!
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "C:\Python 3.5\lib\sit-packages\bs4\__init__.py", line 30, in <module>
from .builder import builder_registry, ParserRejectionMarkup
File "C:\Python 3.5\lib\sit-packages\bs4\__init__.py", line 308, in <module>
from . import _htmlparser
File "C:\Python 3.5\lib\sit-packages\bs4\_htmlparser.py", line 7, in <module>
from html.parser import (
ImportError: cannot import name 'HTMLParseError'

Update: Starting with 4.4.0, BeautifulSoup is compatible with Python 3.5. Upgrade:
pip install --upgrade beautifulsoup4
Old answer:
Because of the changes made for Deprecate strict mode of HTMLParser issue:
Issue #15114: the strict mode and argument of HTMLParser,
HTMLParser.error, and the HTMLParserError exception have been removed.
I'm afraid beautifulSoup4 is not compatible with Python 3.5 at the moment. Use Python 3.4.

Update: BeautifulSoup 4.4.0 has been updated to be python3.5 compatible, so a pip install --upgrade beautifulsoup4 should do the trick if you are still hitting this issue.

I've sent the author a followup about this bug. If you want to install BeautifulSoup on Python 3.5a, I've uploaded a working patch of the source code to github.
https://github.com/jjangsangy/BeautifulSoup4
You can install it using setup.py or just copy & paste this code into terminal.
git clone https://github.com/jjangsangy/BeautifulSoup4 \
&& cd BeautifulSoup4 \
&& python3.5 setup.py install
I'm assuming here that since you're trying out 3.5a your python interpreter is installed with proper user permissions for your site-packages directory so no sudo invocation is necessary.

Trouble installing beautifulsoup

I have some trouble installing BeautifulSoup4 (working on OSX 10.6 with Python 3.3)
I try to solve it since a couple of hours but it does not work...
Thats how I did it:
I opened the terminal and typed
sudo easy_install pip
That worked fine without any errors.
Then I typed
pip install BeautifulSoup4
which worked as well. Although it got installed into the library-folder in python 2.7.
Opening the IDLE of python I typed the following to see weather it is working or not
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
It came back with the following message:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<pyshell#5>", line 1, in <module>
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
ImportError: No module named 'bs4'
I googled already a lot but every solution that is suggested in forums does not work.
I downloaded already python 3.4, cause it comes with pip, I don't have it installed on python 3.3, but bs4 wont work with python 3.4 neither. I moved the beautifulsoup folder, which got installed in the python 2.7 folder, into the sitepackage folder of python 3.3 - did not work neither.
I tried to download the package from the website and installed it with this command
python setup.py install
as well as
python3 setup.py install
The latter gave me heaps of errormessages, all of them "Invalid Syntax" in some of the bs4 code... i.e.
.
...
....
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/lib/python3.4/site-packages/bs4/__init__.py", line 175
except Exception, e:
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
byte-compiling /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/lib/python3.4/site-packages/bs4/builder/__init__.py to __init__.cpython-34.pyc
byte-compiling /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/lib/python3.4/site-packages/bs4/builder/_html5lib.py to _html5lib.cpython-34.pyc
byte-compiling /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/lib/python3.4/site-packages/bs4/builder/_htmlparser.py to _htmlparser.cpython-34.pyc
File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/lib/python3.4/site-packages/bs4/builder/_htmlparser.py", line 76
except (ValueError, OverflowError), e:
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
....
..
.
I am out of ideas....

pip is probably being installed with python2.7. You should explicitly invoke the setup script with python3 — python3 get_pip.py

I also faced this problem today. My system is Windows 8, and I have installed Python 2.7 and Python 3.3. When under Python 3.3, from bs4 import BeautifulSoup caused this:
...Python33\lib\site-packages\bs4__init__.py, line 175, pos 29
except Exception, e:
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
So I uninstalled bs4 in Python 2.7 and Python 3.3. Then in Git I did:
pip3 install BeautifulSoup4
This succeeded and now everything is ok.