html-entities.py

# Found at:
# http://effbot.org/zone/re-sub.htm#unescape-html

import re
import htmlentitydefs


##
# Removes HTML or XML character references and entities from a text string.
#
# @param text The HTML (or XML) source text.
# @return The plain text, as a Unicode string, if necessary.

def unescape(text):
    def fixup(m):
        text = m.group(0)
        if text[:2] == "&#":
            # character reference
            try:
                if text[:3] == "&#x":
                    return unichr(int(text[3:-1], 16))
                else:
                    return unichr(int(text[2:-1]))
            except ValueError:
                pass
        else:
            # named entity
            try:
                text = unichr(htmlentitydefs.name2codepoint[text[1:-1]])
            except KeyError:
                pass
        return text  # leave as is
    return re.sub("&#?\w+;", fixup, text)


def main():
    entity = 'ɛɛ'
    print unescape(entity)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()