Replace HTML character entity reference

replace_htmlentity.py

import re
import htmlentitydefs

def replace_htmlentity(string):
    amp = string.find('&')
    if amp == -1:
        return string

    entity = re.compile("&([A-Za-z]+);")
    entity_match = entity.findall(string)

    for name in entity_match:
        try:
            c = htmlentitydefs.name2codepoint[name]
        except KeyError:
            continue

        string = string.replace("&%s;" % name, unichr(c))

    return string

print replace_htmlentity("< >&&hogehoge;")