unescape.py

# Unescape HTML Entities
#
# October 28, 2006 | Fredrik Lundh
#
# This function converts HTML entities and character references to 
# ordinary characters.
# 
# From: http://effbot.org/zone/re-sub.htm#unescape-html

import re, htmlentitydefs

def unescape(text):
    """Removes HTML or XML character references and entities from a text
    string.

    @param text The HTML (or XML) source text.
    @return The plain text, as a Unicode string, if necessary."""

    def fixup(m):
        text = m.group(0)
        if text[:2] == "&#":
            # character reference
            try:
                if text[:3] == "&#x":
                    return unichr(int(text[3:-1], 16))
                else:
                    return unichr(int(text[2:-1]))
            except ValueError:
                pass
        else:
            # named entity
            try:
                text = unichr(htmlentitydefs.name2codepoint[text[1:-1]])
            except KeyError:
                pass
        return text # leave as is
    return re.sub("&#?\w+;", fixup, text)