Small, dependable HTML cleaner/minifier with sensible defaults

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Project description

smol

smol-html

Small, dependable HTML cleaner/minifier with sensible defaults.

Motivation

Nosible is a search engine, which means we need to store and process a very large number of webpages. To make this tractable, we strip out visual chrome and other non-essential components that don’t matter for downstream tasks (indexing, ranking, retrieval, and LLM pipelines) while preserving the important content and structure. This package cleans and minifies HTML, greatly reducing size on disk; combined with Brotli compression (by Google), the savings are even larger.

Cleaning impact on size

📦 Installation

pip install smol-html

⚡ Installing with uv

uv pip install smol-html

Requirements

Python: 3.9
Dependencies:
- beautifulsoup4>=4.0.1
- brotli>=0.5.2
- lxml[html-clean]>=1.3.2
- minify-html>=0.2.6

Quick Start

Clean an HTML string (or page contents):

from smol_html import SmolHtmlCleaner

html = """
<html>
  <head><title> Example </title></head>
  <body>
    <div>  Hello <span> world </span> </div>
  </body>
</html>
"""

# All constructor arguments are keyword-only and optional.
cleaner = SmolHtmlCleaner()
cleaned = cleaner.make_smol(raw_html=html)

print(cleaned)

Customization

SmolHtmlCleaner exposes keyword-only parameters with practical defaults. You can:

Pass overrides to the constructor, or
Adjust attributes on the instance after creation.

from smol_html import SmolHtmlCleaner

cleaner = SmolHtmlCleaner()
cleaner.attr_stop_words.add("advert")  # e.g., add a custom stop word

Usage Examples

Minimal:

from smol_html import SmolHtmlCleaner

cleaner = SmolHtmlCleaner()
out = cleaner.make_smol(raw_html="<p>Hi <!-- note --> <a href='x'>link</a></p>")

Customize a few options:

from smol_html import SmolHtmlCleaner

cleaner = SmolHtmlCleaner(
    attr_stop_words={"nav", "advert"},
    remove_header_lists=False,
    minify=True,
)

out = cleaner.make_smol(raw_html="<p>Hi</p>")

Compressed Bytes Output

Produce compressed bytes using Brotli with make_smol_bytes

from smol_html import SmolHtmlCleaner
import brotli  # only needed if you want to decompress here in the example

html = """
<html>
  <body>
    <div>  Hello <span> world </span> </div>
  </body>
</html>
"""

cleaner = SmolHtmlCleaner()

# Get compressed bytes (quality 11 is strong compression)
compressed = cleaner.make_smol_bytes(raw_html=html, compression_level=11)

# Example: decompress back to text to inspect (optional)
decompressed = brotli.decompress(compressed).decode("utf-8")
print(decompressed)

# Or write compressed output directly to a file
with open("page.html.br", "wb") as f:
    f.write(compressed)

Parameter Reference

To improve readability, the reference is split into two tables:

What it does and when to change
Types and default values

What It Does

Parameter	What it does	When to change
`non_text_to_keep`	Whitelist of empty/non-text tags to preserve (e.g., images, figures, tables, line breaks).	If important non-text elements are being removed or you want to keep/drop more empty tags.
`attr_stop_words`	Tokens matched against `id`/`class`/`role`/`item_type` on small elements; matches are removed as likely non-content.	Add tokens like `advert`, `hero`, `menu` to aggressively drop UI chrome, or remove tokens if content is lost.
`remove_header_lists`	Removes links/lists/images within `<header>` to reduce nav clutter.	Set `False` if your header contains meaningful content you want to keep.
`remove_footer_lists`	Removes links/lists/images within `<footer>` to reduce boilerplate.	Set `False` for content-heavy footers you need.
`minify`	Minifies output HTML using `minify_html`.	Set `False` for readability or debugging; use `--pretty` in the CLI.
`minify_kwargs`	Extra options passed to `minify_html.minify`.	Tune minification behavior (e.g., whitespace, comments) without changing cleaning.
`meta`	lxml Cleaner option: remove `<meta>` content when `True`.	Usually leave `False`; enable only for strict sanitation.
`page_structure`	lxml Cleaner option: remove page-structure tags (e.g., `<head>`, `<body>`) when `True`.	Rarely needed; keep `False` to preserve structure.
`links`	lxml Cleaner option: sanitize/clean links.	Leave `True` unless you need raw anchors untouched.
`scripts`	lxml Cleaner option: remove `<script>` tags when `True`.	Keep `False` to preserve scripts; usually safe to remove via `javascript=True` anyway.
`javascript`	lxml Cleaner option: remove JS and event handlers.	Set `False` only if you truly need inline JS (not recommended).
`comments`	lxml Cleaner option: remove HTML comments.	Set `False` to retain comments for debugging.
`style`	lxml Cleaner option: remove CSS and style attributes.	Set `False` to keep inline styles/CSS.
`processing_instructions`	lxml Cleaner option: remove processing instructions.	Rarely change; keep for safety.
`embedded`	lxml Cleaner option: remove embedded content (e.g., `<embed>`, `<object>`).	Set `False` to keep embedded media.
`frames`	lxml Cleaner option: remove frames/iframes.	Set `False` if iframes contain needed content.
`forms`	lxml Cleaner option: remove form elements.	Set `False` if you need to keep forms/inputs.
`annoying_tags`	lxml Cleaner option: remove tags considered "annoying" by lxml (e.g., `<blink>`, `<marquee>`).	Rarely change.
`kill_tags`	Additional explicit tags to remove entirely.	Add site-specific or custom tags to drop.
`remove_unknown_tags`	lxml Cleaner option: drop unknown/invalid tags.	Set `False` if you rely on custom elements.
`safe_attrs_only`	Only allow attributes listed in `safe_attrs`.	Set `False` if you need to keep arbitrary attributes.
`safe_attrs`	Allowed HTML attributes when `safe_attrs_only=True`.	Extend to keep additional attributes you trust.

Types and Defaults

Parameter	Type	Default
`non_text_to_keep`	`set[str]`	media/meta/table/`br` tags
`attr_stop_words`	`set[str]`	common UI/navigation tokens
`remove_header_lists`	`bool`	`True`
`remove_footer_lists`	`bool`	`True`
`minify`	`bool`	`True`
`minify_kwargs`	`dict`	`{}`
`meta`	`bool`	`False`
`page_structure`	`bool`	`False`
`links`	`bool`	`True`
`scripts`	`bool`	`False`
`javascript`	`bool`	`True`
`comments`	`bool`	`True`
`style`	`bool`	`True`
`processing_instructions`	`bool`	`True`
`embedded`	`bool`	`True`
`frames`	`bool`	`True`
`forms`	`bool`	`True`
`annoying_tags`	`bool`	`True`
`kill_tags`	`set[str] \| None`	`None`
`remove_unknown_tags`	`bool`	`True`
`safe_attrs_only`	`bool`	`True`
`safe_attrs`	`set[str]`	curated set

Project details

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0.2.0

Dec 9, 2025

0.1.7

Sep 12, 2025

0.1.6

Sep 12, 2025

This version

0.1.5

Sep 12, 2025

0.1.4

Sep 12, 2025

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smol-html 0.1.5

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Project description

smol-html

Motivation

📦 Installation

⚡ Installing with uv

Requirements

Quick Start

Customization

Usage Examples

Compressed Bytes Output

Parameter Reference

What It Does

Types and Defaults

Project details

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Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

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