HTML/text formatting question

[Edvard Majakari]

"Dr. Who" <google at spiceaid.com> writes:

> This seems clunky and my next step was going to be to define generic
> functions which would generate the surrounding html tags only when
> passed the proper argument.  I was wondering if there was a better way
> to do this with a standard Python library.  It looked like formatter
> might but that it also might be too low-level.

You could use something like this:

class HTMLFormatter:

    def __init__(self, tag, contents=None, **kwargs):

        self.tag = tag
        self._content = contents
        self.attrs = dict()

        self._set_attrs(kwargs)

    def _set_attrs(self, attrs):

        self.attrs = attrs

        if '_class' in self.attrs:
            self.attrs['class'] = self.attrs['_class']
            del self.attrs['_class']

    def set_content(self, contents, **kwargs):
        """
        Set content of HTML element to contents.

        >>> f = HTMLFormatter('a')
        >>> f.set_content('cat', href='http://www.cat.org')
        >>> str(f)
        '<a href="http://www.cat.org">cat</a>'
        >>> str(HTMLFormatter('td', 'cat'))
        '<td>cat</td>'
        >>> str(HTMLFormatter('p', 'kitty kit', _class='cat'))
        '<p class="cat">kitty kit</p>'
        >>> str(HTMLFormatter('br'))
        '<br/>'
        """

        self._content = contents

        if kwargs:
            self._set_attrs(kwargs)

    def set_attribute(self, attr, val):
        """Set/update attribute 'attr' to 'val'."""

        self.attrs[attr] = val

    def add_content(self, contents):
        """Add content to element.

        >>> p = HTMLFormatter('p', 'name of the cat is ')
        >>> p.add_content('meow')
        >>> str(p)
        '<p>name of the cat is meow</p>'
        >>> p = HTMLFormatter('td')
        >>> p.add_content('cat')
        >>> str(p)
        '<td>cat</td>'
        """

        if self._content is None:
            self._content = ''

        self._content = "%s%s" % (self._content, str(contents))

    def contents(self):
        """Get contents of object.

        >>> p = HTMLFormatter('p', 'nice doggy dog')
        >>> p.contents()
        'nice doggy dog'
        >>> p.add_content(HTMLFormatter('em', 'called wuff'))
        >>> p.contents()
        'nice doggy dog<em>called wuff</em>'

        """

        return self._content

    def __str__(self):
        open_tag = '%s' % self.tag
        if self.attrs:
            attrs = self.attrs.items()
            attrs.sort()
            attrs_str = ' '.join(['%s="%s"' % (k, v) \
                                  for k,v in attrs])
            open_tag = '%s %s' % (self.tag, attrs_str)

        if self._content is not None:
            return '<%s>%s</%s>' % (open_tag, self._content, self.tag)
        else:
            return '<%s/>' % open_tag


Doctest strings show examples how to use it. For serious HTML building stuff
it needs fiddling with, but should be handy for tiny projects.

--
# Edvard Majakari		Software Engineer
# PGP PUBLIC KEY available    	Soli Deo Gloria!

$_ = '456476617264204d616a616b6172692c20612043687269737469616e20'; print
join('',map{chr hex}(split/(\w{2})/)),uc substr(crypt(60281449,'es'),2,4),"\n";