Remove text from HTML files but keep the javascript and structure using python

Question

There are many ways to extract text from html file but I'd like to do the opposite and have the text removed while the structure and javascript code stay intact.

For example Remove all

while keeping

Is there an easy way to do this? Any help is greatly appreciated. Cheers

Be more specific please: provide sample HTML input, and the expected output. — har07
– har07, Commented Jul 22, 2015 at 11:39

301_Moved_Permanently · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-22 12:04:25Z

3

I would go with BeautifulSoup:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
from bs4.element import NavigableString
from copy import copy

def strip_content(in_tag):
    tag = copy(in_tag) # remove this line if you don't care about your input
    if tag.name == 'script':
        # Do no mess with scripts
        return tag
    # strip content from all children
    children = [strip_content(child) for child in tag.children if not isinstance(child, NavigableString)]
    # remove everything from the tag
    tag.clear()
    for child in children:
        # Add back stripped children
        tag.append(child)
    return tag

def test(filename):
    soup = BeautifulSoup(open(filename))
    cleaned_soup = strip_content(soup)
    print(cleaned_soup.prettify())

if __name__ == "__main__":
    test("myfile.html")

answered Jul 22, 2015 at 12:04

301_Moved_Permanently

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1 Comment

Dave Lewis Over a year ago

Great, Thank you! Exactly what I wanted.

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