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Convert XML/HTML Entities into Unicode String in Python [duplicate]

I'm doing some web scraping and sites frequently use HTML entities to represent non ascii characters. Does Python have a utility that takes a string with HTML entities and returns a unicode type?

For example:

I get back:

&#x01ce;

which represents an "ǎ" with a tone mark. In binary, this is represented as the 16 bit 01ce. I want to convert the html entity into the value u'\u01ce'

Answer*

You could find an answer here -- [Getting international characters from a web page?][1]

**EDIT**: It seems like `BeautifulSoup` doesn't convert entities written in hexadecimal form. It can be fixed:

 import copy, re
 from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

 hexentityMassage = copy.copy(BeautifulSoup.MARKUP_MASSAGE)
 # replace hexadecimal character reference by decimal one
 hexentityMassage += [(re.compile('&#x([^;]+);'), 
 lambda m: '&#%d;' % int(m.group(1), 16))]
 
 def convert(html):
 return BeautifulSoup(html,
 convertEntities=BeautifulSoup.HTML_ENTITIES,
 markupMassage=hexentityMassage).contents[0].string

 html = '<html>&#x01ce;&#462;</html>'
 print repr(convert(html))
 # u'\u01ce\u01ce'

**EDIT**: 

[`unescape()`][2] function mentioned by [@dF][3] which uses `htmlentitydefs` standard module and `unichr()` might be more appropriate in this case.


 [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53224/getting-international-characters-from-a-web-page#53246
 [2]: http://effbot.org/zone/re-sub.htm#unescape-html
 [3]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57708/convert-xml-html-entities-into-unicode-string-in-python/58125#58125

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This solution doesn't work with the example: print BeautifulSoup('<html>ǎ</html>', convertEntities=BeautifulSoup.HTML_ENTITIES) This returns the same HTML entity

Cristian
– Cristian

2008年09月11日 22:03:56 +00:00
Commented Sep 11, 2008 at 22:03
Note: this only applied to BeautifulSoup 3, deprecated and considered legacy since 2012. BeautifulSoup 4 handles HTML entities like these automatically.

Martijn Pieters
– Martijn Pieters

2017年09月05日 07:28:32 +00:00
Commented Sep 5, 2017 at 7:28
@MartijnPieters: correct. html.unescape() is a better option on the modern Python.

jfs
– jfs

2017年09月05日 07:35:01 +00:00
Commented Sep 5, 2017 at 7:35
Absolutely. If all you wanted was to decode HTML entities there is no need to use BeatifulSoup at all.

Martijn Pieters
– Martijn Pieters

2017年09月05日 07:35:54 +00:00
Commented Sep 5, 2017 at 7:35
@MartijnPieters: on old Python versions, unless HTMLParser.HTMLParser().unescape() hack worked for you, using BeautifulSoup might be a better alternative than defining unescape() by hand (vendoring a pure Python lib vs. a copy-paste of the function).

jfs
– jfs

2017年09月05日 07:42:45 +00:00
Commented Sep 5, 2017 at 7:42

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Convert XML/HTML Entities into Unicode String in Python [duplicate]

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