html 1.1

To construct HTML start with an instance of html.HTML(). Add tags by accessing the tag’s attribute on that object. For example:

>>> from html import HTML
>>> h = HTML()
>>> h.br
>>> print h
<br>

If the tag should have text content you may pass it at tag creation time or later using the tag’s .text() method (note it is assumed that a fresh HTML instance is created for each of the following examples):

>>> p = h.p('hello world!\n')
>>> p.text('more → text', escape=False)
>>> h.p
>>> print h
<p>hello, world!
more &rarr; text</p>
<p>

Any HTML-specific characters (<>&") in the text will be escaped for HTML safety as appropriate unless escape=False is passed. Note also that the top-level HTML object adds newlines between tags by default.

If the tag should have sub-tags you have two options. You may either add the sub-tags directly on the tag:

>>> l = h.ol
>>> l.li('item 1')
>>> l.li.b('item 2 > 1')
>>> print h
<ol>
<li>item 1</li>
<li><b>item 2 &gt; 1</b></li>
</ol>

Note that the default behavior with lists (and tables) is to add newlines between sub-tags to generate a nicer output.

The alternative to the above method is to use the containter tag as a context for adding the sub-tags. The top-level HTML object keeps track of which tag is the current context:

>>> with h.table(border='1'):
...   for i in range(2):
...     with h.tr:
...       h.td('column 1')
...       h.td('column 2')
...  print h
<table border="1">
<tr><td>column 1</td><td>column 2</td></tr>
<tr><td>column 1</td><td>column 2</td></tr>
</table>

Note the addition of an attribute to the <table> tag.

A variation on the above is to explicitly reference the context variable, but then there’s really no benefit to using a with statement. The following is functionally identical to the first list construction:

>>> with h.ol as l:
...   l.li('item 1')
...   l.li.b('item 2 > 1')

You may turn off/on adding newlines by passing newlines=False or True to the tag (or HTML instance) at creation time:

>>> l = h.ol(newlines=False)
>>> l.li('item 1')
>>> l.li('item 2')
>>> print h
<ol><li>item 1</li><li>item 2</li></ol>

This code is copyright 2009 eKit.com Inc (http://www.ekit.com/) See the end of the source file for the license of use.