Minimalistic HTML generator for Python 3.6+ with compact syntax

Safely construct valid HTML with Python code. Example:

from microhtml import *
print(
  ᑉhtml(
    ᑉhead( ᑉtitle( 'Test page' )),
    ᑉbody( ᑉspan( 'Simple example.', class_='example' ))).pretty())

This prints out a valid, formatted XHTML document:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
    <title>
      Test page
    </title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <span class="example">Simple example.</span>
  </body>
</html>

Yes, you'll probably need to copy-paste the unicode symbol and yes, you'll want to use a modern editor, but the resulting syntax is very compact and will not collide with your identifiers even with the import *.

Minimalism also extends to implementation – it's very short (<80 lines in v0.3). Check out microhtml/__init__.py.

Longer example with more features showcased:

from microhtml import *

# Rendering a non-indented string (result: <p>Third <em>and last</em> paragraph</p>)
raw_html = str(ᑉp("Third ", ᑉem("and last"), ' paragraph'))

# Writing a nicely formatted / tidied XHTML document to a file descriptor
print(
  ᑉhtml( lang='en_US' )(
    ᑉhead(ᑉtitle("Test page")),
    ᑉbody(
        ᑉp("Hi!", width=123), # 123 becomes "123"
        ᑉhr(class_='someclass'), # Reserved words like "class" can be written with a trailing underscore
        ᑉp('Literal strings are safely <em>escaped</em> by default.'),
        ᑉrawstr(raw_html), # Use ᑉrawstr() if you don't want escaping
        ᑉtag('applet', code='Bubbles.class', width=350, height=350),  # Tag with custom name
        ᑉdiv("custom", data__custom="abc"), # '__' in attribute names is replaced with '-'
        ᑉdiv(style='float: right')(  # This is how you can type attributes on left and content on right
            ᑉdiv(style='border: 1px solid black')(
                ᑉa("Nested", href='#anchortest'), '|', 'link')))).pretty())

This outputs:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html lang="en_US" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en_US">
  <head>
    <title>
      Test page
    </title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p width="123">
      Hi!
    </p>
    <hr class="someclass" />
    <p>
      Literal strings are safely &lt;em&gt;escaped&lt;/em&gt; by default.
    </p>
    <p>
      Third <em>and last</em> paragraph
    </p><applet code="Bubbles.class" width="350" height="350">
      </applet>
    <div data-custom="abc">
      custom
    </div>
    <div style="float: right">
      <div style="border: 1px solid black">
        <a href="#anchortest">Nested</a>|link
      </div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

Building

To build a pypi package, simply issue make. It will install a venv, run tests, generate a .pyi (type/syntax completion stub) and build a source package (sdist). Use make clean to clean up.

Alternatives and acknowledgements

If you find unicode characters in source code a horrendous abomination, and don't mind endless nested with expressions, you might prefer Yattag.

Uses tidylib for pretty printing. Inspiration drawn from pyhtml by Cenk Altı.

Copyright

Copyright 2019 Jarno Elonen. Released under the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.