Python. Replacing text between html tags

Question

I want to write a function that highlights some text. It takes a HTML string as input and returns HTML string with additional html tags.

Example: Input string (need to highlight the word "text"):

<div>
<a href="..." title="text to highlight">Some text to highlight</a>
<a href="..." title="text to highlight">Some other text to highlight</a>
</div>

Output string:

<div>
<a href="..." title="text to highlight">Some <b class="highlight">text</b> to highlight</a>
<a href="..." title="text to highlight">Some other <b class="highlight">text</b> to highlight</a>
</div>

I have found a regexp that matches text only between html tags, but I can't figure out how to surround some part of it with additional tags

highlight_str = u'text'
p = re.compile(r"[^<>]+(?=[<])")
    iterator = p.finditer(search_str)
    for match in iterator:
        # code for replacement here ???

Is there any other ideas to do it?

Seriously, the parade of programmers using regular expressions on HTML is endless. — hughdbrown
– hughdbrown, Commented Nov 1, 2010 at 14:31
That regex doesn't work for anything other than a rigged demo. — tchrist
– tchrist, Commented Nov 1, 2010 at 14:31
Ok. I've understood. It is wasn't a good idea to do it with regex. — andrexus
– andrexus, Commented Nov 1, 2010 at 20:33

ceth · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-01 14:13:16Z

4

Look at Beautiful Soup.

answered Nov 1, 2010 at 14:13

ceth

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1 Comment

andrexus Over a year ago

Could you give a little more info how to make it with Beautiful Soup?

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