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Say I have the following HTML script:

<head>$name</head>

And I have the following shell script which replaces the variable in the HTML script with a name

#/bin/bash
report=$(cat ./a.html)
export name=$(echo aakash)
bash -c "echo \"$report\""

This works.

Now I have to implement the shell script in Python so that I am able to replace the variables in the HTML file and output the replaced contents in a new file. How do I do it?

An example would help. Thanks.

asked Jul 8, 2013 at 17:48
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  • If you can write it in bash you can convert it to python and test that... probably should have posted your python attempt first. Commented Jul 9, 2013 at 4:28

3 Answers 3

2

It looks like you're after a templating engine, but if you wanted a straight forward, no thrills, built into the standard library, here's an example using string.Template:

from string import Template
with open('a.html') as fin:
 template = Template(fin.read())
print template.substitute(name='Bob')
# <head>Bob</head>

I thoroughly recommend you read the docs especially regarding escaping identifier names and using safe_substitute and such...

answered Jul 8, 2013 at 17:56
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2 Comments

But this will require substituting all the variables at once. I want to substitute them one at a time.
@user2359303 to be fair - that wasn't ascertainable from your question and makes no sense - what is the reason you only want to/have to replace one at a time?
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with open('a.html', 'r') as report:
 data = report.read()
data = data.replace('$name', 'aakash')
with open('out.html', 'w') as newf:
 newf.write(data)
Jon Clements
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answered Jul 8, 2013 at 17:58

2 Comments

Cool...Even I figured out that this is the only way....templates wont do since they require substitution of all variables at once, while I want them to replace one at a time
@user2359303: And, if you want to change only the first occurence, you can change data.replace('$name', 'aakash') to data.replace('$name', 'aakash', 1).
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Firstly you could save your html template like:

from string import Template
with open('a.html') as fin:
 template = Template(fin.read())

Then if you want to substitute variables one at a time, you need to use safe_substitute and cast the result to a template every time. This wont return a key error even when a key value is not specified.

Something like:

new=Template(template.safe_substitute(name="Bob"))

After this , the new template is new , which needs to be modified again if you would want.

answered Jul 9, 2013 at 4:26

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