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

While alot of people mentioned using regex to strip html tags, there are a lot of downsides.

for example:

hello world
I love you

Should be parsed to:

Hello world
I love you

Here's a snippet I came up with, you can cusomize it to your specific needs, and it works like a charm

import re
import html
def html2text(htm):
    ret = html.unescape(htm)
    ret = ret.translate({
        8209: ord('-'),
        8220: ord('"'),
        8221: ord('"'),
        160: ord(' '),
    })
    ret = re.sub(r"\s", " ", ret, flags = re.MULTILINE)
    ret = re.sub("
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