Question

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Decode HTML entities in Python string?

I have a malformed string in Python:

Muhammad Ali's fight with Larry Holmes

where ' is a apostrophe.

Firstly what representation is this: '? Secondly, how can I parse the string in python so that it replaces ' with '

Answer 1

The Python Standard Library’s HTMLParser is able to decode HTML entities in strings.

>>> import HTMLParser
>>> h = HTMLParser.HTMLParser()
>>> s = h.unescape('© 2010')
>>> s
u'\xa9 2010'
>>> print s
© 2010
>>> s = h.unescape('© 2010')
>>> s
u'\xa9 2010'

A range of solutions are described here: http://fredericiana.com/2010/10/08/decoding-html-entities-to-text-in-python/