The nextSibling property is used to return the next node of the specified node as Node object or null if the specified node is the last one in the list. It is a read-only property. In this article, we will find the next sibling(s) of a given tag that satisfies the given criteria and appears after this tag in the document.
Examples:
HTML_DOC :
“””
<html>
<head>
<title> Find Next Siblings </title>
</head>
<body>
<p class = “languages”>1957: FORTRAN</p>
<p class = “languages”>1972: C</p>
<p class = “languages”>1983: C++</p>
<p class = “languages”>1991: Python</p>
<p class = “languages”>1993: Ruby</p>
<p class = “languages”>1995: Java</p>
<p class = “languages”>1995: PHP</p>
<p class = “languages”>1995: JavaScript</p>
</body>
</html>
“””
element : <p class = “languages”>1957: FORTRAN</p>
Output :
<p class = “languages”>1972: C</p>
<p class = “languages”>1983: C++</p>
<p class = “languages”>1991: Python</p>
<p class = “languages”>1993: Ruby</p>
<p class = “languages”>1995: Java</p>
<p class = “languages”>1995: PHP</p>
<p class = “languages”>1995: JavaScript</p>
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
Finding Next Siblings:
find_next_siblings() function is used to find all the next siblings of a tag / element.
It returns all the next siblings that match.
Find Next Sibling:
find_next_sibling() function is used to find the succeeding sibling of a tag/element.
It only returns the first match next to the tag/element.
Example 1: Finding all the next siblings of a tag/element
Python3
# Import Modulefrom bs4 import BeautifulSoup # HTML DocumentHTML_DOC = """ <html> <head> <title> Find Next Siblings </title> </head> <body> <p class = "languages">1957: FORTRAN</p> <p class = "languages">1972: C</p> <p class = "languages">1983: C++</p> <p class = "languages">1991: Python</p> <p class = "languages">1993: Ruby</p> <p class = "languages">1995: Java</p> <p class = "languages">1995: PHP</p> <p class = "languages">1995: JavaScript</p> </body> </html> """ # Function to find all the next siblingsdef findNextSiblings(html): # parse html content soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser") element = soup.p # Extracting all the next siblings of an element nextSiblings = element.find_next_siblings("p") # Printing all the next siblings for nextSibling in nextSiblings: print(nextSibling) # Function CallfindNextSiblings(HTML_DOC) |
Output:
Example 2: Finding the next sibling of a tag/element
Python3
# Import Modulefrom bs4 import BeautifulSoup # HTML DocumentHTML_DOC = """ <html> <head> <title> Find Next Sibling </title> </head> <body> <p class = "languages">1957: FORTRAN</p> <p class = "languages">1972: C</p> <p class = "languages">1983: C++</p> <p class = "languages">1991: Python</p> <p class = "languages">1993: Ruby</p> <p class = "languages">1995: Java</p> <p class = "languages">1995: PHP</p> <p class = "languages">1995: JavaScript</p> </body> </html> """ # Function to find the next siblingdef findNextSibling(html): # parse html content soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser") element = soup.p # Extracting the next sibling of an element nextSibling = element.find_next_sibling("p") # Printing next sibling of an element print(nextSibling) # Function CallfindNextSibling(HTML_DOC) |
Output:
Example 3: Finding the next sibling of Parent Tag (In the case of nested structure)
Python3
# Import Modulefrom bs4 import BeautifulSoup # HTML DocumentHTML_DOC = """ <html> <head> <title> Find Next Sibling Of Parent </title> </head> <body> <div class = "languages"> <p>1957: FORTRAN</p> </div> <div class = "languages">1995: PHP</div> <div class = "languages">1995: JavaScript</div> </body> </html> """ # Function to find the next siblingdef findNextSibling(html): # parse html content soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser") element = soup.p # Parent tag of the element parent_tag = element.parent # Extracting the next sibling of parent nextSibling = parent_tag.find_next_sibling("div") # Printing next sibling of parent print(nextSibling) # Function CallfindNextSibling(HTML_DOC) |
Output:
Example 4: Finding a specified number of next siblings.
For example, finding only the next 3 siblings of an element.
This can be done by using the limit argument
Python3
# Import Modulefrom bs4 import BeautifulSoup # HTML DocumentHTML_DOC = """ <html> <head> <title> Find Next 3 Siblings </title> </head> <body> <p class = "languages">1957: FORTRAN</p> <p class = "languages">1972: C</p> <p class = "languages">1983: C++</p> <p class = "languages">1991: Python</p> <p class = "languages">1993: Ruby</p> <p class = "languages">1995: Java</p> <p class = "languages">1995: PHP</p> <p class = "languages">1995: JavaScript</p> </body> </html> """ # Function to find 3 next siblingsdef findNextSiblings(html): # parse html content soup = BeautifulSoup(html, "html.parser") element = soup.p # Extracting the next 3 siblings of an element nextSiblings = element.find_next_siblings("p", limit=3) # Printing the next 3 siblings for nextSibling in nextSiblings: print(nextSibling) # Function CallfindNextSiblings(HTML_DOC) |
Output:
