How to Install Beautiful Soup in Python

1. Install Beautiful Soup Using Package Installer for Python (PIP)
2. Install Beautiful Soup Using Advanced Package Tool (APT)
3. Install Beautiful Soup by Manually Downloading Source Codes
4. Install Beautiful Soup by Using wget and tar in Linux

Python provides us with various libraries and modules to perform different tasks. Beautiful Soup library is used in Python to scrape HTML and XML files.

This article will discuss different ways to install the Beautiful Soup library in Python.

Install Beautiful Soup Using Package Installer for Python (PIP)

To install the Beautiful Soup library using PIP, you can execute the following command in the command line terminal on your machine.

pip install beautifulsoup4

The above command, after execution, will install the beautiful soup library on your machine. If you’re using Python 2.x and 3.x on the same machine, the above command will install the beautiful soup library into your Python 2.x directory.

To install the beautiful soup library in the Python 3.x directory, you can run the following command in the command line terminal.

pip3 install beautifulsoup4

Install Beautiful Soup Using Advanced Package Tool (APT)

APT is used to handle software packages efficiently. You will require the computer’s administrator password to install the beautiful soup library using APT.

To install beautiful soup using APT, you must execute the following command in the command line terminal.

sudo apt-get install python-bs4

Here, the sudo keyword is used to run the command in superuser, i.e., administrator mode. Without using the sudo command, you will be unable to install any software on your machine.

Again, if you have multiple Python versions installed on your machine, the above command will install the beautiful soup library into Python 2’s directory. To install the beautiful soup library in Python 3, you can use the following command.

sudo apt-get install python3-bs4

Install Beautiful Soup by Manually Downloading Source Codes

To install the beautiful soup library in Python using the source code, you first need to download the source code from this link. You will get a compressed file from the link.

1. After downloading the file, you must go to the directory where the file has been downloaded. Then, you need to extract the files from the downloaded compressed file.

2. Once you extract all the files, you need to go to the folder in which the files have been extracted. There, you will find a file named setup.py.

   You must run the command line terminal in the current directory where setup.py is saved.

3. Next, you need to run the setup.py file using the following command in the terminal.

   python setup.py.
   

4. After running the above command, the beautiful soup library will be installed in your Python 2’s directory. To install the beautiful soup library in Python 3, you can run setup.py using Python 3 by executing the following command in the command line terminal.

   python3 setup.py
   

Remember to execute the commands by opening the terminal in the same directory where setup.py is stored. Otherwise, you will face errors.

Install Beautiful Soup by Using wget and tar in Linux

The wget command executes a URL to download a file using the command line. Also, the tar command is used to unzip a compressed file using the command line.

We will use the following steps to install the beautiful soup library using the wget command and the tar command.

To verify the installation of the beautiful soup module, you can use the import statement in your program, as shown below.

import bs4

If executing the above statement in a Python program doesn’t cause any error, the beautiful soup library has been successfully installed on your machine.

Out of all the methods discussed in this article, we suggest you use the package installer for Python (PIP) or Advanced Package Tool (APT) to install the beautiful soup library on your machine. This will help you avoid errors like version mismatch or absence of dependencies because PIP and APT handle these things for you.