Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

The HTMLParser Module

Module HTMLParser supplies one class, HTMLParser, that you subclass to override methods. HTMLParser.HTMLParser is similar to sgmllib.SGMLParser, but is simpler and able to parse XHTML as well. The main differences between HTMLParser and SGMLParser are the following:

• HMTLParser does not call methods named do_tag, start_tag, and end_tag. To process tags and end tags, your subclass X of HTMLParser must override methods handle_starttag and/or handle_endtag and check explicitly for the tags it wants to process.

• HMTLParser does not keep track of, nor check, tag nesting in any way.

• HMTLParser does nothing, by default, to resolve character and entity references. Your subclass X of HTMLParser must override methods handle_charref and/or handle_entityref if it needs to perform processing of such references.

Commonly used methods of an instance h of subclass X of HTMLParser are as follows.

close	h.close( ) Tells the parser that there is no more input data. When X overrides close, h.close must also call HTMLParser.close to ensure that all buffered data is processed.
feed	h.feed(data) Passes to the parser a part of the text being parsed. The parser processes some prefix of the text and holds the rest in a buffer until the next call to h.feed or h.close.
handle_charref	h.handle_charref(ref) Called to process a character reference '&#ref;'. HTMLParser’s implementation of handle_charref does nothing.
handle_comment	h.handle_comment(comment) Called to handle comments. comment is the string ...