CSS Selectors for Precise Selection

CSS selectors let you find elements using the same syntax that styles web pages. They're often more precise than tag names alone.

# Find by class
soup.select(".product-title")

# Find by ID
soup.select("#main-content")

# Find by tag and class
soup.select("div.container")

The select() method always returns a list. Use select_one() for a single element.

Selectors can be very specific:

# Paragraphs inside a div with class "content"
soup.select("div.content p")

# Direct children only
soup.select("ul > li")

Why use selectors? They match how web developers think about page structure. You can often copy a selector directly from your browser's developer tools.

I cover CSS selectors extensively in my Web Scraping course.