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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-31T13:35:11+00:00

I want to find all tables in html using BeautifulSoup. Inner tables should be

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I want to find all tables in html using BeautifulSoup. Inner tables should be included in outer tables.

I have created some code which works and it gives expected output. But, I don’t like this solution, because it uses .decompose() which destroys the’soup’ object.

Do you know how to do it in more elegant way?

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup as bs

input = '''<html><head><title>title</title></head>
<body>
<p>paragraph</p>
<div><div>
    <table>table1<table>inner11<table>inner12</table></table></table>
    <div><table>table2<table>inner2</table></table></div>
</div></div>
<table>table3<table>inner3</table></table>
<table>table4<table>inner4</table></table>
</html>'''

soup = bs(input)
while(True):
    t=soup.find("table")
    if t is None:
        break
    print str(t)
    t.decompose()

Output:

<table>table1<table>inner11<table>inner12</table></table></table>
<table>table2<table>inner2</table></table>
<table>table3<table>inner3</table></table>
<table>table4<table>inner4</table></table>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    use soup.findAll("table") instead of find() and decompose() :

    tables = soup.findAll("table")

for table in tables:
     if table.findParent("table") is None:
         print str(table)

    output : 

    <table>table1<table>inner11<table>inner12</table></table></table>
<table>table2<table>inner2</table></table>
<table>table3<table>inner3</table></table>
<table>table4<table>inner4</table></table>

    and nothing gets destroyed/destructed.

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