How do I unescape HTML entities in a string in Python 3.1? [duplicate]

Question

I have looked all around and only found solutions for python 2.6 and earlier, NOTHING on how to do this in python 3.X. (I only have access to Win7 box.)

I HAVE to be able to do this in 3.1 and preferably without external libraries. Currently, I have httplib2 installed and access to command-prompt curl (that's how I'm getting the source code for pages). Unfortunately, curl does not decode html entities, as far as I know, I couldn't find a command to decode it in the documentation.

YES, I've tried to get Beautiful Soup to work, MANY TIMES without success in 3.X. If you could provide EXPLICIT instructions on how to get it to work in python 3 in MS Windows environment, I would be very grateful.

So, to be clear, I need to turn strings like this: Suzy & John into a string like this: "Suzy & John".

Answer 1

You could use the function html.unescape:

In Python3.4+ (thanks to J.F. Sebastian for the update):

import html html.unescape('Suzy & John') # 'Suzy & John'  html.unescape('"') # '"' 

In Python3.3 or older:

import html.parser     html.parser.HTMLParser().unescape('Suzy & John') 

In Python2:

import HTMLParser HTMLParser.HTMLParser().unescape('Suzy & John') 

Answer 2

You can use xml.sax.saxutils.unescape for this purpose. This module is included in the Python standard library, and is portable between Python 2.x and Python 3.x.

>>> import xml.sax.saxutils as saxutils >>> saxutils.unescape("Suzy & John") 'Suzy & John'