How to write and save html file in python?

Question

This is what I know about writing to an HTML file and saving it:

html_file = open("filename","w")
html_file.write()
html_file.close()

But how do I save to the file if I want to write a really long codes like this:

   1   <table border=1>
   2     <tr>
   3       <th>Number</th>
   4       <th>Square</th>
   5     </tr>
   6     <indent>
   7     <% for i in range(10): %>
   8       <tr>
   9       <td><%= i %></td>
   10      <td><%= i**2 %></td>
   11      </tr>
   12    </indent>
   13  </table>

Out of interest, what number are you expecting len(s) to be? — Tom
– Tom, Commented May 13, 2013 at 14:03
What's wrong with html_file.write(<td><font style="background-color:%s;">%s<font></td>' % (colour[j % len(colour)], k)) etc? — timss
– timss, Commented May 13, 2013 at 14:03
Also, you're mixing print "string" and print("string"). Stick with the one that is default in the python version you're using. — timss
– timss, Commented May 13, 2013 at 14:05
I understood you. You can have multi-line strings by putting them in triple quotes: """ long string goes here """. So just store your HTML in a string variable: html_str = """long html string""". Then pass that variable to write: HTML_file.write(html_str). Does that help? — Anubhav C
– Anubhav C, Commented May 13, 2013 at 15:28

Saikat · Accepted Answer · 2025-05-26 15:39:15Z

78

You can create multi-line strings by enclosing them in triple quotes. So you can store your HTML in a string and pass that string to write():

html_str = """
<table border=1>
     <tr>
       <th>Number</th>
       <th>Square</th>
     </tr>
     <indent>
     <% for i in range(10): %>
       <tr>
         <td><%= i %></td>
         <td><%= i**2 %></td>
       </tr>
     </indent>
</table>
"""

html_file= open("filename","w")
html_file.write(html_str)
html_file.close()

edited May 26 at 15:39

Saikat

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answered May 13, 2013 at 15:37

Anubhav C

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Comments

Greenstick · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-29 19:45:06Z

27

As others have mentioned, use triple quotes ”””abc””” for multiline strings. Also, you can do this without having to call close() using the with keyword. This is, to my knowledge, best practice (see comment below). For example:

# HTML String
html = """
<table border=1>
     <tr>
       <th>Number</th>
       <th>Square</th>
     </tr>
     <indent>
     <% for i in range(10): %>
       <tr>
         <td><%= i %></td>
         <td><%= i**2 %></td>
       </tr>
     </indent>
</table>
"""

# Write HTML String to file.html
with open("file.html", "w") as file:
    file.write(html)

See https://stackoverflow.com/a/11783672/2206251 for more details on the with keyword in Python.

edited Sep 29, 2021 at 19:45

answered Aug 15, 2017 at 18:20

Greenstick

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1 Comment

oneindelijk Over a year ago

I believe the with statement is preferred as you have less chance of a race condition, since the file is closed as soon as the write statement finishes (as opposed to closing the file descriptor manually with file.close())

GWW · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-13 14:02:52Z

4

print('<tr><td>%04d</td>' % (i+1), file=Html_file)

answered May 13, 2013 at 14:02

GWW

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2 Comments

Dave Challis Over a year ago

This will only work in using the python 3 print function, so you'd need to add from __future__ import print_function to use it with the python 2 code written in the question.

timss Over a year ago

Interesting! Is this in any way better than file.write()? Even if this is available, shouldn't you stick with the one, "preferred" way, file.write()?

mousomer · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-24 09:05:58Z

3

shorter version of Nurul Akter Towhid's answer (the fp.close is automated):

with open("my.html","w") as fp:
   fp.write(html)

edited Jun 24, 2018 at 9:05

answered Jun 21, 2018 at 8:09

mousomer

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Comments

Igo Coelho · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-13 14:11:04Z

1

You can try:

colour = ["red", "red", "green", "yellow"]

with open('mypage.html', 'w') as myFile:
    myFile.write('<html>')
    myFile.write('<body>')
    myFile.write('<table>')

    s = '1234567890'
    for i in range(0, len(s), 60):
        myFile.write('<tr><td>%04d</td>' % (i+1));
    for j, k in enumerate(s[i:i+60]):
        myFile.write('<td><font style="background-color:%s;">%s<font></td>' % (colour[j %len(colour)], k));


    myFile.write('</tr>')
    myFile.write('</table>')
    myFile.write('</body>')
    myFile.write('</html>')

answered May 13, 2013 at 14:11

Igo Coelho

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4 Comments

timss Over a year ago

I'm not sure how optimized Python's file.write() is, but it strikes me as a bad idea to use it every time you want to append something, and that you should probably save it to a list (stack) before doing the IO. In other words have a content = [] and do content.extend("<html>") etc.

Shawn Chin Over a year ago

You can use itertools.cycle to simplify the background colour selection. e.g. create iterator using colour = itertools.cycle(["red", ...]) then use next(colour) to retrieve the next colour.

martineau Over a year ago

This is going to write a file that is one line long since there are no line-breaks output anywhere. That's really long codes...

martineau Over a year ago

Python's file.write() is buffered, so I wouldn 't worry about calling it a lot or trying to optimize calls to it.

Nurul Akter Towhid · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-31 01:11:35Z

0

You can do it using write() :

#open file with *.html* extension to write html
file= open("my.html","w")
#write then close file
file.write(html)
file.close()

answered Jul 31, 2017 at 1:11

Nurul Akter Towhid

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