How to split a string into html tags using python regex?

Question

Say I have a string:

"<blockquote>Quote</blockquote><br />text <h3>This is a title</h3>"

Expected Output:

["<blockquote>Quote</blockquote><br />", "text", "<h3>This is a title</h3>"]

I need both the opening and closing tags to be included in the same item, as above.

I've tried: re.split("<*>*</*>", s)

I'm quite new with Regex so any help is appreciated

Possible duplicate of RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags — Sayse
– Sayse, Commented Jul 12, 2018 at 20:02
Don't use regex to parse HTML :) stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/… — David Zemens
– David Zemens, Commented Jul 12, 2018 at 20:19
"Every time you attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions, the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins, and Russian hackers pwn your webapp. Parsing HTML with regex summons tainted souls into the realm of the living. HTML and regex go together like love, marriage, and ritual infanticide. " — David Zemens
– David Zemens, Commented Jul 12, 2018 at 20:22
"Even Jon Skeet cannot parse HTML using regular expressions." — user7851115
– user7851115, Commented Jul 12, 2018 at 20:23
A more explanatory article on "why not use Regex": blog.codinghorror.com/parsing-html-the-cthulhu-way Most importantly: Parsing HTML is a solved problem. You do not need to solve it. You just need to be lazy (and use another library) — David Zemens
– David Zemens, Commented Jul 12, 2018 at 20:27

Sunitha · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-12 20:28:11Z

8

You can use re.findall to do this.

import re
s = "<blockquote>Quote</blockquote><br />text <h3>This is a title</h3>"
re.findall(r'<[^>]*>.*?</[^>]*>(?:<[^>]*/>)?|[^<>]+', s)
# ['<blockquote>Quote</blockquote><br />', 'text ', '<h3>This is a title</h3>']

But avoid parsing html data like directly using regex and consider using something like BeautifulSoup

>>> from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
>>> soup = BeautifulSoup(s, "html.parser")
>>> soup.findAll()
[<blockquote>Quote</blockquote>, <br/>, <h3>This is a title</h3>]
>>> soup.findAll()[0].text
'Quote'
>>> [s for s in soup.strings]
['Quote', 'text ', 'This is a title']

edited Jul 12, 2018 at 20:28

answered Jul 12, 2018 at 20:14

Sunitha

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3 Comments

kpaul Over a year ago

Could you direct me to a Beautiful Soup solution?

Sunitha Over a year ago

Updated the answer

kpaul Over a year ago

Works. Thank you!

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