A simple way set custom indentation levels when using BeautifulSoup's soup.prettify()

soup_prettify2.py

# Python == 3.6.2
# bs4 == 4.6.0
# The current version of BeautifulSoup's soup.prettify() function only allows for 
# an indentation level = to 1 space. This is a simple, reliable way to allow for the use
# of any indentation level you wish.




import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup


url = "https://www.google.com"
r = requests.get(url)
soup = BeautifulSoup(r.content, "html.parser")

def soup_prettify2(soup, desired_indent): #where desired_indent is number of spaces as an int() 
	pretty_soup = str()
	previous_indent = 0
	for line in soup.prettify().split("\n"): # iterate over each line of a prettified soup
		current_indent = str(line).find("<") # returns the index for the opening html tag '<' 
		# which is also represents the number of spaces in the lines indentation
		if current_indent == -1 or current_indent > previous_indent + 2:
			current_indent = previous_indent + 1
			# str.find() will equal -1 when no '<' is found. This means the line is some kind 
			# of text or script instead of an HTML element and should be treated as a child 
			# of the previous line. also, current_indent should never be more than previous + 1.	
		previous_indent = current_indent
		pretty_soup += write_new_line(line, current_indent, desired_indent)
	return pretty_soup
		
		
def write_new_line(line, current_indent, desired_indent):
	new_line = ""
	spaces_to_add = (current_indent * desired_indent) - current_indent
	if spaces_to_add > 0:
		for i in range(spaces_to_add):
			new_line += " "		
	new_line += str(line) + "\n"
	return new_line

pretty_soup = soup_prettify2(soup, desired_indent=4)
print(pretty_soup)

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