html2text

html2text is a Python script that converts a page of HTML into clean, easy-to-read plain ASCII text. Better yet, that ASCII also happens to be valid Markdown (a text-to-HTML format).

Usage: html2text [filename [encoding]]

Option	Description
--version	Show program's version number and exit
-h, --help	Show this help message and exit
--ignore-links	Don't include any formatting for links
--escape-all	Escape all special characters. Output is less readable, but avoids corner case formatting issues.
--reference-links	Use reference links instead of links to create markdown
--mark-code	Mark preformatted and code blocks with [code]...[/code]

For a complete list of options see the docs

Or you can use it from within Python:

>>> import html2text
>>>
>>> print(html2text.html2text("<p><strong>Zed's</strong> dead baby, <em>Zed's</em> dead.</p>"))
**Zed's** dead baby, _Zed's_ dead.

Or with some configuration options:

>>> import html2text
>>>
>>> h = html2text.HTML2Text()
>>> # Ignore converting links from HTML
>>> h.ignore_links = True
>>> print(h.handle("<p>Hello, <a href='https://www.google.com/earth/'>world</a>!"))
Hello, world!

>>> print(h.handle("<p>Hello, <a href='https://www.google.com/earth/'>world</a>!"))

Hello, world!

>>> # Don't Ignore links anymore, I like links
>>> h.ignore_links = False
>>> print(h.handle("<p>Hello, <a href='https://www.google.com/earth/'>world</a>!"))
Hello, [world](https://www.google.com/earth/)!

Originally written by Aaron Swartz. This code is distributed under the GPLv3.

How to install

html2text is available on pypi https://pypi.org/project/html2text/

Using pip

$ pip install html2text

Using uv (recommended)

uv is a fast Python package installer and resolver.

$ uv pip install html2text

Or add to your project:

$ uv add html2text

Development

This project uses uv for dependency management.

Setup development environment

# Install uv if you haven't already
$ pip install uv

# Sync dependencies (creates virtual environment and installs all dependencies)
$ uv sync

# Activate the virtual environment
$ source .venv/bin/activate  # On Unix/macOS
# or
$ .venv\Scripts\activate  # On Windows

How to run unit tests

# Using uv (recommended)
$ uv run pytest

# Or with tox
$ tox

To see the coverage results:

$ uv run pytest --cov=html2text --cov-report=html

then open the ./htmlcov/index.html file in your browser.

Code Quality & Linting

Run individual linters:

# Black (code formatting)
$ uv run black .

# isort (import sorting)
$ uv run isort .

# Flake8 (code linting)
$ uv run flake8

# mypy (type checking)
$ uv run mypy --strict html2text

Or run all checks with tox:

$ tox -e pre-commit

Documentation

Documentation lives here