This document is for an old version of Python that is no longer supported. You should upgrade and read the Python documentation for the current stable release.

# 19.1. `HTMLParser` — Simple HTML and XHTML parser

Note

The `HTMLParser` module has been renamed to `html.parser` in Python 3. The 2to3 tool will automatically adapt imports when converting your sources to Python 3.

New in version 2.2.

Source code: Lib/HTMLParser.py

This module defines a class `HTMLParser` which serves as the basis for parsing text files formatted in HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) and XHTML. Unlike the parser in `htmllib`, this parser is not based on the SGML parser in `sgmllib`.

class `HTMLParser.``HTMLParser`

  An `HTMLParser` instance is fed HTML data and calls handler methods when start tags, end tags, text, comments, and other markup elements are encountered. The user should subclass `HTMLParser` and override its methods to implement the desired behavior.

  The `HTMLParser` class is instantiated without arguments.

  Unlike the parser in `htmllib`, this parser does not check that end tags match start tags or call the end-tag handler for elements which are closed implicitly by closing an outer element.

An exception is defined as well:

exception `HTMLParser.``HTMLParseError`

  `HTMLParser` is able to handle broken markup, but in some cases it might raise this exception when it encounters an error while parsing. This exception provides three attributes: `msg` is a brief message explaining the error, `lineno` is the number of the line on which the broken construct was detected, and `offset` is the number of characters into the line at which the construct starts.

## 19.1.1. Example HTML Parser Application

As a basic example, below is a simple HTML parser that uses the `HTMLParser` class to print out start tags, end tags and data as they are encountered:

    from HTMLParser import HTMLParser

    # create a subclass and override the handler methods
    class MyHTMLParser(HTMLParser):
        def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
            print "Encountered a start tag:", tag

        def handle_endtag(self, tag):
            print "Encountered an end tag :", tag

        def handle_data(self, data):
            print "Encountered some data  :", data

    # instantiate the parser and fed it some HTML
    parser = MyHTMLParser()
    parser.feed('<html><head><title>Test</title></head>'
                '<body><h1>Parse me!</h1></body></html>')

The output will then be:

    Encountered a start tag: html
    Encountered a start tag: head
    Encountered a start tag: title
    Encountered some data  : Test
    Encountered an end tag : title
    Encountered an end tag : head
    Encountered a start tag: body
    Encountered a start tag: h1
    Encountered some data  : Parse me!
    Encountered an end tag : h1
    Encountered an end tag : body
    Encountered an end tag : html

## 19.1.2. `HTMLParser` Methods

`HTMLParser` instances have the following methods:

`HTMLParser.``feed`(data)

  Feed some text to the parser. It is processed insofar as it consists of complete elements; incomplete data is buffered until more data is fed or `close()` is called. data can be either `unicode` or `str`, but passing `unicode` is advised.

`HTMLParser.``close`()

  Force processing of all buffered data as if it were followed by an end-of-file mark. This method may be redefined by a derived class to define additional processing at the end of the input, but the redefined version should always call the `HTMLParser` base class method `close()`.

`HTMLParser.``reset`()

  Reset the instance. Loses all unprocessed data. This is called implicitly at instantiation time.

`HTMLParser.``getpos`()

  Return current line number and offset.

`HTMLParser.``get_starttag_text`()

  Return the text of the most recently opened start tag. This should not normally be needed for structured processing, but may be useful in dealing with HTML “as deployed” or for re-generating input with minimal changes (whitespace between attributes can be preserved, etc.).

The following methods are called when data or markup elements are encountered and they are meant to be overridden in a subclass. The base class implementations do nothing (except for `handle_startendtag()`):

`HTMLParser.``handle_starttag`(tag, attrs)

  This method is called to handle the start of a tag (e.g. `<div id="main">`).

  The tag argument is the name of the tag converted to lower case. The attrs argument is a list of `(name, value)` pairs containing the attributes found inside the tag’s `<>` brackets. The name will be translated to lower case, and quotes in the value have been removed, and character and entity references have been replaced.

  For instance, for the tag `<A HREF="https://www.cwi.nl/">`, this method would be called as `handle_starttag('a', [('href', 'https://www.cwi.nl/')])`.

  Changed in version 2.6: All entity references from `htmlentitydefs` are now replaced in the attribute values.

`HTMLParser.``handle_endtag`(tag)

  This method is called to handle the end tag of an element (e.g. `</div>`).

  The tag argument is the name of the tag converted to lower case.

`HTMLParser.``handle_startendtag`(tag, attrs)

  Similar to `handle_starttag()`, but called when the parser encounters an XHTML-style empty tag (`<img ... />`). This method may be overridden by subclasses which require this particular lexical information; the default implementation simply calls `handle_starttag()` and `handle_endtag()`.

`HTMLParser.``handle_data`(data)

  This method is called to process arbitrary data (e.g. text nodes and the content of `<script>...</script>` and `<style>...</style>`).

`HTMLParser.``handle_entityref`(name)

  This method is called to process a named character reference of the form `&name;` (e.g. `&gt;`), where name is a general entity reference (e.g. `'gt'`).

`HTMLParser.``handle_charref`(name)

  This method is called to process decimal and hexadecimal numeric character references of the form `&#NNN;` and `&#xNNN;`. For example, the decimal equivalent for `&gt;` is `&#62;`, whereas the hexadecimal is `&#x3E;`; in this case the method will receive `'62'` or `'x3E'`.

`HTMLParser.``handle_comment`(data)

  This method is called when a comment is encountered (e.g. `<!--comment-->`).

  For example, the comment `<!-- comment -->` will cause this method to be called with the argument `' comment '`.

  The content of Internet Explorer conditional comments (condcoms) will also be sent to this method, so, for `<!--[if IE 9]>IE9-specific content<![endif]-->`, this method will receive `'[if IE 9]>IE9-specific content<![endif]'`.

`HTMLParser.``handle_decl`(decl)

  This method is called to handle an HTML doctype declaration (e.g. `<!DOCTYPE html>`).

  The decl parameter will be the entire contents of the declaration inside the `<!...>` markup (e.g. `'DOCTYPE html'`).

`HTMLParser.``handle_pi`(data)

  This method is called when a processing instruction is encountered. The data parameter will contain the entire processing instruction. For example, for the processing instruction `<?proc color='red'>`, this method would be called as `handle_pi("proc color='red'")`.

  Note

  The `HTMLParser` class uses the SGML syntactic rules for processing instructions. An XHTML processing instruction using the trailing `'?'` will cause the `'?'` to be included in data.

`HTMLParser.``unknown_decl`(data)

  This method is called when an unrecognized declaration is read by the parser.

  The data parameter will be the entire contents of the declaration inside the `<![...]>` markup. It is sometimes useful to be overridden by a derived class.

## 19.1.3. Examples

The following class implements a parser that will be used to illustrate more examples:

    from HTMLParser import HTMLParser
    from htmlentitydefs import name2codepoint

    class MyHTMLParser(HTMLParser):
        def handle_starttag(self, tag, attrs):
            print "Start tag:", tag
            for attr in attrs:
                print "     attr:", attr

        def handle_endtag(self, tag):
            print "End tag  :", tag

        def handle_data(self, data):
            print "Data     :", data

        def handle_comment(self, data):
            print "Comment  :", data

        def handle_entityref(self, name):
            c = unichr(name2codepoint[name])
            print "Named ent:", c

        def handle_charref(self, name):
            if name.startswith('x'):
                c = unichr(int(name[1:], 16))
            else:
                c = unichr(int(name))
            print "Num ent  :", c

        def handle_decl(self, data):
            print "Decl     :", data

    parser = MyHTMLParser()

Parsing a doctype:

    >>> parser.feed('<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" '
    ...             '"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">')
    Decl     : DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"

Parsing an element with a few attributes and a title:

    >>> parser.feed('<img src="python-logo.png" alt="The Python logo">')
    Start tag: img
         attr: ('src', 'python-logo.png')
         attr: ('alt', 'The Python logo')
    >>>
    >>> parser.feed('<h1>Python</h1>')
    Start tag: h1
    Data     : Python
    End tag  : h1

The content of `script` and `style` elements is returned as is, without further parsing:

    >>> parser.feed('<style type="text/css">#python { color: green }</style>')
    Start tag: style
         attr: ('type', 'text/css')
    Data     : #python { color: green }
    End tag  : style

    >>> parser.feed('<script type="text/javascript">'
    ...             'alert("<strong>hello!</strong>");</script>')
    Start tag: script
         attr: ('type', 'text/javascript')
    Data     : alert("<strong>hello!</strong>");
    End tag  : script

Parsing comments:

    >>> parser.feed('<!-- a comment -->'
    ...             '<!--[if IE 9]>IE-specific content<![endif]-->')
    Comment  :  a comment
    Comment  : [if IE 9]>IE-specific content<![endif]

Parsing named and numeric character references and converting them to the correct char (note: these 3 references are all equivalent to `'>'`):

    >>> parser.feed('&gt;&#62;&#x3E;')
    Named ent: >
    Num ent  : >
    Num ent  : >

Feeding incomplete chunks to `feed()` works, but `handle_data()` might be called more than once:

    >>> for chunk in ['<sp', 'an>buff', 'ered ', 'text</s', 'pan>']:
    ...     parser.feed(chunk)
    ...
    Start tag: span
    Data     : buff
    Data     : ered
    Data     : text
    End tag  : span

Parsing invalid HTML (e.g. unquoted attributes) also works:

    >>> parser.feed('<p><a class=link href=#main>tag soup</p ></a>')
    Start tag: p
    Start tag: a
         attr: ('class', 'link')
         attr: ('href', '#main')
    Data     : tag soup
    End tag  : p
    End tag  : a