13.3 htmllib -- A parser for HTML documents

This module defines a class which can serve as a base for parsing text files formatted in the HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML). The class is not directly concerned with I/O -- it must be provided with input in string form via a method, and makes calls to methods of a ``formatter'' object in order to produce output. The HTMLParser class is designed to be used as a base class for other classes in order to add functionality, and allows most of its methods to be extended or overridden. In turn, this class is derived from and extends the SGMLParser class defined in module sgmllib. The HTMLParser implementation supports the HTML 2.0 language as described in RFC 1866. Two implementations of formatter objects are provided in the formatter module; refer to the documentation for that module for information on the formatter interface.

The following is a summary of the interface defined by sgmllib.SGMLParser:

The module defines a single class:

class HTMLParser( formatter)
This is the basic HTML parser class. It supports all entity names required by the HTML 2.0 specification (RFC 1866). It also defines handlers for all HTML 2.0 and many HTML 3.0 and 3.2 elements.

See Also:

Module formatter:
Interface definition for transforming an abstract flow of formatting events into specific output events on writer objects.
Module HTMLParser:
Alternate HTML parser that offers a slightly lower-level view of the input, but is designed to work with XHTML, and does not implement some of the SGML syntax not used in ``HTML as deployed'' and which isn't legal for XHTML.
Module htmlentitydefs:
Definition of replacement text for HTML 2.0 entities.
Module sgmllib:
Base class for HTMLParser.



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