Converting html to text with Python

Question

I am trying to convert an html block to text using Python.

Input:

<div class="body"><p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong></strong>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Consectetuer adipiscing elit. <a href="http://example.com/" target="_blank" class="source">Some Link</a> Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Aenean massa.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p></div>

Desired output:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa

Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Some Link Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa

Aenean massa.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa

Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa

I tried the html2text module without much success:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import urllib2
import html2text
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

soup = BeautifulSoup(urllib2.urlopen('http://example.com/page.html').read())

txt = soup.find('div', {'class' : 'body'})

print(html2text.html2text(txt))

The txt object produces the html block above. I'd like to convert it to text and print it on the screen.

Answer 1

soup.get_text() outputs what you want:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
print(soup.get_text())

output:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Some Link Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Aenean massa.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa

To keep newlines:

print(soup.get_text('\n'))

To be identical to your example, you can replace a newline with two newlines:

soup.get_text().replace('\n','\n\n')

Answer 2

It's possible using python standard html.parser:

from html.parser import HTMLParser

class HTMLFilter(HTMLParser):
    text = ""
    def handle_data(self, data):
        self.text += data

f = HTMLFilter()
f.feed(data)
print(f.text)

Answer 3

You can use a regular expression, but it's not recommended. The following code removes all the HTML tags in your data, giving you the text:

import re

data = """<div class="body"><p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong></strong>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Consectetuer adipiscing elit. <a href="http://example.com/" target="_blank" class="source">Some Link</a> Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Aenean massa.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p></div>"""

data = re.sub(r'<.*?>', '', data)

print(data)

Output

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Some Link Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Aenean massa.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa

Answer 4

The '\n' places a newline between the paragraphs.

from bs4 import Beautifulsoup

soup = Beautifulsoup(text)
print(soup.get_text('\n'))

Answer 5

I liked @FrBrGeorge's no dependency answer so much that I expanded it to only extract the body tag and added a convenience method so that HTML to text is a single line:

from abc import ABC
from html.parser import HTMLParser


class HTMLFilter(HTMLParser, ABC):
    """
    A simple no dependency HTML -> TEXT converter.
    Usage:
          str_output = HTMLFilter.convert_html_to_text(html_input)
    """
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.text = ''
        self.in_body = False
        super().__init__(*args, **kwargs)

    def handle_starttag(self, tag: str, attrs):
        if tag.lower() == "body":
            self.in_body = True

    def handle_endtag(self, tag):
        if tag.lower() == "body":
            self.in_body = False

    def handle_data(self, data):
        if self.in_body:
            self.text += data

    @classmethod
    def convert_html_to_text(cls, html: str) -> str:
        f = cls()
        f.feed(html)
        return f.text.strip()           

See comment for usage.

This converts all of the text inside the body, which in theory could include style and script tags. Further filtering could be achieved by extending the pattern of as shown for body -- i.e. setting instance variables in_style or in_script.

Answer 6

I was in need of a way of doing this on a client's system without having to download additional libraries. I never found a good solution, so I created my own. Feel free to use this if you like.

import urllib 

def html2text(strText):
    str1 = strText
    int2 = str1.lower().find("<body")
    if int2>0:
       str1 = str1[int2:]
    int2 = str1.lower().find("</body>")
    if int2>0:
       str1 = str1[:int2]
    list1 = ['<br>',  '<tr',  '<td', '</p>', 'span>', 'li>', '</h', 'div>' ]
    list2 = [chr(13), chr(13), chr(9), chr(13), chr(13),  chr(13), chr(13), chr(13)]
    bolFlag1 = True
    bolFlag2 = True
    strReturn = ""
    for int1 in range(len(str1)):
      str2 = str1[int1]
      for int2 in range(len(list1)):
        if str1[int1:int1+len(list1[int2])].lower() == list1[int2]:
           strReturn = strReturn + list2[int2]
      if str1[int1:int1+7].lower() == '<script' or str1[int1:int1+9].lower() == '<noscript':
         bolFlag1 = False
      if str1[int1:int1+6].lower() == '<style':
         bolFlag1 = False
      if str1[int1:int1+7].lower() == '</style':
         bolFlag1 = True
      if str1[int1:int1+9].lower() == '</script>' or str1[int1:int1+11].lower() == '</noscript>':
         bolFlag1 = True
      if str2 == '<':
         bolFlag2 = False
      if bolFlag1 and bolFlag2 and (ord(str2) != 10) :
        strReturn = strReturn + str2
      if str2 == '>':
         bolFlag2 = True
      if bolFlag1 and bolFlag2:
        strReturn = strReturn.replace(chr(32)+chr(13), chr(13))
        strReturn = strReturn.replace(chr(9)+chr(13), chr(13))
        strReturn = strReturn.replace(chr(13)+chr(32), chr(13))
        strReturn = strReturn.replace(chr(13)+chr(9), chr(13))
        strReturn = strReturn.replace(chr(13)+chr(13), chr(13))
    strReturn = strReturn.replace(chr(13), '\n')
    return strReturn


url = "http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/25/us-air-strikes-islamic-state-oil-isis"    
html = urllib.urlopen(url).read()    
print html2text(html)

Answer 7

It's possible to use BeautifulSoup to remove unwanted scripts and similar, though you may need to experiment with a few different sites to make sure you've covered the different types of things you wish to exclude. Try this:

from requests import get
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup as BS
response = get('http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2284783.stm')
soup = BS(response.content, "html.parser")
for child in soup.body.children:
   if child.name == 'script':
       child.decompose() 
print(soup.body.get_text())

Answer 8

There are some nice things here, and i might as well throw in my solution:

from html.parser import HTMLParser
def _handle_data(self, data):
    self.text += data + '\n'

HTMLParser.handle_data = _handle_data

def get_html_text(html: str):
    parser = HTMLParser()
    parser.text = ''
    parser.feed(html)

    return parser.text.strip()

Answer 9

gazpacho might be a good choice for this!

Input:

from gazpacho import Soup

html = """\
<div class="body"><p><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong></strong>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Consectetuer adipiscing elit. <a href="http://example.com/" target="_blank" class="source">Some Link</a> Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Aenean massa.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p>
<p>Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa</p></div>
"""

Output:

text = Soup(html).strip(whitespace=False) # to keep "\n" characters intact
print(text)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Some Link Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Aenean massa.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa
Consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa

Answer 10

The main problem is how you keep some basic formatting. Here is my own minimal approach to keep new lines and bullets. I am sure it's not the solution to everything you want to keep but it's a starting point:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

def parse_html(html):
    elem = BeautifulSoup(html, features="html.parser")
    text = ''
    for e in elem.descendants:
        if isinstance(e, str):
            text += e.strip()
        elif e.name in ['br',  'p', 'h1', 'h2', 'h3', 'h4','tr', 'th']:
            text += '\n'
        elif e.name == 'li':
            text += '\n- '
    return text

The above adds a new line for 'br', 'p', 'h1', 'h2', 'h3', 'h4','tr', 'th' and a new line with - in front of text for li elements