Extracting text from HTML file using Python

Question

I\'d like to extract the text from an HTML file using Python. I want essentially the same output I would get if I copied the text from a browser and pasted it into notepad.

Answer 1

This isn't exactly a Python solution, but it will convert text Javascript would generate into text, which I think is important (E.G. google.com). The browser Links (not Lynx) has a Javascript engine, and will convert source to text with the -dump option.

So you could do something like:

fname = os.tmpnam()
fname.write(html_source)
proc = subprocess.Popen(['links', '-dump', fname], 
                        stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
                        stderr=open('/dev/null','w'))
text = proc.stdout.read()