CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonhtml
macdelacruz
macdelacruz

Reputation: 637

Remove a portion of HTML text using Python

I have a very long HTML text of the following structure:

<div>
    <div>
        <p>Paragraph 1 Lorem ipsum dolor... long text... </p>
        <p>Paragraph 2 Lorem ipsum dolor... long text... </p>
        <p>Paragraph 3 Lorem ipsum dolor... long text... </p>
    </div>
</div>

Now, let's say I want to trim the HTML text to just 1000 characters, but I still want the HTML to be valid, that is, close the tags whose closing tags were removed. What can I do to correct the trimmed HTML text using Python? Note that the HTML is not always structured as above.

I need this for an email campaign wherein a preview of the blog is sent but the recipient needs to visit the blog's URL to see the complete article.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 94

Answers (2)

SeniorFoffo
SeniorFoffo

Reputation: 28

How about BeautifulSoup? (python-bs4)

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

test_html = """<div>
    <div>
        <p>Paragraph 1 Lorem ipsum dolor... long text... </p>
        <p>Paragraph 2 Lorem ipsum dolor... long text... </p>
        <p>Paragraph 3 Lorem ipsum dolor... long text... </p>
    </div>
</div>"""

test_html = test_html[0:50]
soup = BeautifulSoup(test_html, 'html.parser')

print(soup.prettify())

.prettify() should close the tags automatically.

Upvotes: 1

wallabra
wallabra

Reputation: 442

I can show an example. If it looks like this:

<div>
  <p>Long text...</p>
  <p>Longer text to be trimmed</p>
</div>

And you have a Python code like:

def TrimHTML(HtmlString):
    result = []
    newlinesremaining = 2 # or some other value of your choice
    foundlastpart = False
    for x in list(HtmlString): # being HtmlString the html to be trimmed
        if not newlinesremaining < 1:
            if x == '\n':
                newlinesremaining -= 1
            result.append(x)
        elif foundlastpart == False:
            if x == \n:
                newlinesremaining = float('inf')
                foundlastpart == True
        return result.join('')

and you run that code inputting the example HTML above in the function, then the function returns:

<div>
  <p>Long text...</p>
</div>

For some probably odd reason I couldn't test it in the short time window that I have before work.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions