html-text

library0.7.1pypypi✓ verified 23d ago

html-text is a Python library designed to extract clean, readable plain text from HTML content. It goes beyond simple text extraction by removing invisible non-text content like inline styles, JavaScript, and comments. The library intelligently normalizes whitespace and can optionally add newlines after block-level elements (e.g., headers, paragraphs) to produce text that more closely resembles browser rendering, making it suitable for text classification or further natural language processing. The current version is 0.7.1, and it maintains an active development status.

serialization

pip install html-text

github ↗package ↗

INSTALL

IMPORT

SIG · HTML-TEXT

html-text

serializationpythonv0.7.1

Install

2.2s avg

Import

86ms

Disk

28MB

Pass rate

10/ 10

Env Coverage10 / 10

glibc

3.9–3.13

musl

3.9–3.13

Install & Compatibility

Where this runs

tested against v0.7.1 · pip install

no network on importno background threads

Install × environment matrix

Each cell = how many times install + import succeeded across repeated harness runs. Partial = flaky.
glibc = Debian/Ubuntu slim · musl = Alpine Linux

musl

py 3.10–3.95 runs

installs and imports cleanly · install 0.0s · import 0.090s · 29.9MB

glibc

py 3.10–3.95 runs

installs and imports cleanly · install 2.2s · import 0.082s · 30MB

28MB installed

● package 28MB

Code

Verified usage

Verified import paths — ran on the pinned version, not inferred.

extract_text

✓ from html_text import extract_text

parse_html

✓ from html_text import parse_html

cleaner

✓ from html_text import cleaner

etree_to_text

✓ from html_text import etree_to_text

cleaned_selector

✓ from html_text import cleaned_selector

Demonstrates the basic usage of `html_text.extract_text` to convert an HTML string into plain text, including an example of disabling layout guessing for a flatter output.

import html_text html_content = '<h1>Hello</h1><p>This is a <b>paragraph</b> with <span>inline</span> text.</p>' plain_text = html_text.extract_text(html_content) print(plain_text) # To get text without layout-driven newlines (e.g., after h1) plain_text_flat = html_text.extract_text(html_content, guess_layout=False) print(plain_text_flat)

Debug

Known issues

gotchaBy default, `html_text.extract_text()` attempts to 'guess layout' and inserts newlines after block-level HTML elements (e.g., <h1>, <p>) to improve readability. If a flat, single-line text output is desired, explicitly set `guess_layout=False`.

fix

For flatter output, call `html_text.extract_text(html_string, guess_layout=False)`.

affects: All versions

gotchaWhen working with pre-parsed `lxml.html.HtmlElement` trees or `parsel.Selector` objects, lower-level functions like `html_text.etree_to_text()` or `html_text.selector_to_text()` do NOT automatically clean the HTML. You must manually apply cleaning using `html_text.cleaner.clean_html()` or `html_text.cleaned_selector()` first.

fix

Always clean manually before using lower-level extraction functions, e.g., `cleaned_tree = html_text.cleaner.clean_html(tree)` or `cleaned_sel = html_text.cleaned_selector(html_content)`.

affects: All versions

gotchaThe `html-text` library depends on `lxml`. Installing `lxml` can sometimes be complex on various operating systems, requiring system-level development packages (e.g., `libxml2-dev` and `libxslt-dev` on Debian/Ubuntu, or Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS) for its C extensions to compile correctly.

fix

Refer to the `lxml` installation guide (often linked from its PyPI page or documentation) for specific system dependencies required before `pip install lxml` or `pip install html-text`.

affects: All versions

Errors

Common errors & fixes

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'html-text'

The Python package `html-text` is installed, but the correct import name uses an underscore instead of a hyphen.

fix

Use `import html_text` instead of `import html-text` in your Python code.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'html2text'

The user has installed the `html-text` library but is mistakenly trying to import a different, similarly named library called `html2text`.

fix

If you intended to use the `html-text` library, import it as `import html_text`. If you intended to use the `html2text` library, install it with `pip install html2text` and then `import html2text`.

AttributeError: module 'html_text' has no attribute 'extract_text'

This error occurs when attempting to call a function that either does not exist or is misspelled/incorrectly cased within the `html_text` module. The primary function for text extraction is `extract_text`.

fix

Ensure you are calling the correct function with the proper casing: `html_text.extract_text(your_html_content)`.

Upgrade

Version history

0.7.1latest on PyPI · released Oct 6, 2025

Audit

Dependencies

lxmlrequiredCore dependency for HTML parsing; may require system-level development packages for installation.

Agent activity

7 hits · last 30 days

node

Resources

githubhttps://github.com/zytedata/html-text ↗

packagehttps://pypi.org/project/html-text/ ↗