html2text is a Python script that converts a page of HTML into clean, easy-to-read plain ASCII text. Better yet, that ASCII also happens to be valid Markdown (a text-to-HTML format).
Usage: html2text [(filename|url) [encoding]]
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
--version |
Show program's version number and exit |
-h, --help |
Show this help message and exit |
--ignore-links |
Don't include any formatting for links |
--escape-all |
Escape all special characters. Output is less readable, but avoids corner case formatting issues. |
--reference-links |
Use reference links instead of links to create markdown |
--mark-code |
Mark preformatted and code blocks with [code]...[/code] |
For a complete list of options see the docs
Or you can use it from within Python:
>>> import html2text
>>>
>>> print(html2text.html2text("<p><strong>Zed's</strong> dead baby, <em>Zed's</em> dead.</p>"))
**Zed's** dead baby, _Zed's_ dead.
Or with some configuration options:
>>> import html2text
>>>
>>> h = html2text.HTML2Text()
>>> # Ignore converting links from HTML
>>> h.ignore_links = True
>>> print h.handle("<p>Hello, <a href='http://earth.google.com/'>world</a>!")
Hello, world!
>>> print(h.handle("<p>Hello, <a href='http://earth.google.com/'>world</a>!"))
Hello, world!
>>> # Don't Ignore links anymore, I like links
>>> h.ignore_links = False
>>> print(h.handle("<p>Hello, <a href='http://earth.google.com/'>world</a>!"))
Hello, [world](http://earth.google.com/)!
Originally written by Aaron Swartz. This code is distributed under the GPLv3.
html2text is available on pypi
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/html2text
$ pip install html2text
PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:. coverage run --source=html2text setup.py test -v
To see the coverage results:
coverage combine
coverage html
then open the ./htmlcov/index.html file in your browser.
Documentation lives here