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:
For example, to parse the entire contents of a file, use:
parser.feed(open('myfile.html').read()) parser.close()
<tag ...>
is encountered; end_tag() is called
when a closing tag of the form <tag>
is encountered. If
an opening tag requires a corresponding closing tag, like <H1>
... </H1>
, the class should define the start_tag()
method; if a tag requires no closing tag, like <P>
, the class
should define the do_tag() method.
The module defines a parser class and an exception:
formatter) |
See Also: