How to Remove HTML Tags from String in Python

Removing HTML tags from a string in Python can be achieved using various methods, including regular expressions and specialized libraries like Beautiful Soup. Each approach is suitable for specific scenarios, depending on your requirements. Let’s explore how to efficiently remove HTML tags.

Using Regular Expressions

The simplest way to remove HTML tags is by using the re module. This method is lightweight and efficient for straightforward cases.

import re

# Sample string with HTML tags
s1 = "<h1>Welcome to Python Programming</h1>"

# Removing HTML tags using regex
s2 = re.sub(r"<.*?>", "", s1)
print(s2)

Welcome to Python Programming

The re.sub() method replaces all occurrences of the pattern <.*?> with an empty string, effectively removing all HTML tags from the input string.

Let's explore other methods of removing HTML tags from a string in python:

Using Beautiful Soup ( For Nested HTML Structures)

For more robust and complex cases, especially when dealing with malformed HTML, Beautiful Soup is a preferred choice. It ensures better accuracy and handles a wider range of edge cases.

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

# Sample string with HTML tags
s1 = "<h1>Welcome to <b>Python Programming</b></h1>"

# Removing HTML tags using Beautiful Soup
soup = BeautifulSoup(s1, "html.parser")
s2 = soup.get_text()
print(s2)

Output:

Welcome to Python Programming

Beautiful Soup parses the string as HTML and extracts only the text content using the get_text() method.

Using lxml

The lxml library is another efficient option, especially for performance-critical applications. It parses the HTML and extracts the text content with minimal overhead.

from lxml.html import fromstring

# Sample string with HTML tags
s1 = "<h1>Welcome to Python Programming</h1>"

# Removing HTML tags using lxml
tree = fromstring(s1)
s2 = tree.text_content()
print(s2)

Output:

Welcome to Python Programming

The text_content() method extracts text while ignoring all HTML tags.