How to use beautiful soup to remove HTML tags from ArcGIS Metadata

Question

I have a script that uses a Python package called arcpy_metdata. It basically allows you to get at ArcGIS metadata. The script is set up to write the metadata to a text file and runs without errors, but unfortunately HTML code used to format the Description and Limitation items also gets written. It interferes with the readability of the textfile. I contacted the author of the package and he suggested BeautifulSoup, which leads to my question. I have this so far, but am at a loss at how to implement it: from bs4 import BeautifulSoup cleantext = BeautifulSoup(raw_html).text‍‍‍‍

And here is my Metadata2Txt script: import arcpy import arcpy_metadata as md import re ws = r'Database Connections\ims to Plainfield.sde\gisedit.DBO.Tax_Map_LY\gisedit.DBO.Tax_Map_Parcels_LY' metadata = md.MetadataEditor(ws) path = r'\gisfile\GISstaff\Jared\Python Scripts\Test\Parcels' ##cleantext = BeautifulSoup(raw_html).text def meta2txt(): title = metadata.title tags = metadata.tags purpose = metadata.purpose abstract = metadata.abstract credits = metadata.credits citation = metadata.citation limitation = metadata.limitation extent_description = metadata.extent_description desc = arcpy.Describe(ws) sr = desc.spatialReference tf = open(path + " " + "{}".format("Metadata.txt"), "w") tf.write("Metadata Content:" + " ") tf.write("----------------------------------------------" + " ") if title: print('Title: {} '.format(title)) tf.write('Title: {} '.format(title) + ' ') else: print('Title: There is no title. ') tf.write('Title: There is no title. ' + ' ') if tags: print('Tags: {} '.format(tags)) tf.write('Tags: {} '.format(tags) + ' ') else: print("Tags: There are no tags. ") tf.write('Tags: There are no tags. ' + ' ') if purpose: print('Summary: {} '.format(purpose)) tf.write('Summary: {} '.format(purpose) + ' ') else: print('Summary: There is no summary. ' + ' ') tf.write('Summary: There is no summary. ' + ' ') if abstract: print('Description: {} '.format(abstract)) tf.write('Description: {} '.format(abstract) + ' ') else: print('Description: There is no description. ') tf.write('Description: There is no description. ' + ' ') if credits: print('Credits: {} '.format(credits)) tf.write('Credits: {} '.format(credits) + ' ') else: print('Credits: There are no credits. ') tf.write('Credits: There are no credits. ' + ' ') if citation: print('Citation: {} '.format(citation)) tf.write('Citation: {} '.format(citation) + ' ') else: print('Citation: There is no citation. ') tf.write('Citation: There is no citation. ' + ' ') if limitation: print('Limitation: {} '.format(limitation)) tf.write('Limitation: {} '.format(limitation) + ' ') else: print('Limitation: There is no limitation. ') tf.write('Limitation: There is no limitation. ' + ' ') if extent_description: print('Extent: {} '.format(extent_description)) tf.write('Extent: {} '.format(extent_description) + ' ') else: print('Extent: There is no extent. ') tf.write('Extent: There is no extent. ' + ' ') if sr: print('Spatial Reference: {} '.format(sr.name)) tf.write('Spatial Reference: {} '.format(sr.name) + ' ') else: print('Spatial Reference: There is no spatial reference. ') tf.write('Extent: There is no spatial reference. ' + ' ') meta2txt()‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Here's how Description item of this particular feature class looks in the textfile after running the script: Description: <DIV STYLE="text-align:Left;"><DIV><DIV><P><SPAN>The tax map parcels layer is published every year normally during the spring through the Will County Clerk Tax Extension. This layer contains various parcels within Will County. The tax map parcels entered is only digitized based upon plats and recorded documents received by the Tax Extension within the Will County Clerk Office. </SPAN></P></DIV></DIV></DIV>‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

ShaunWalbridge · Accepted Answer

Jared, BeautifulSoup expects an input that's an HTML page or fragment. Usually, it's doing the top level parsing, but here, you have arcpy_metadata to do the primary parsing, then want to filter the results through BeautifulSoup. If you'd like to learn how to use BeautifulSoup, I recommend their documentation -- it's quite good. In your case, you want to pass through elements of your results to BeautifulSoup for further filtering prior to their output. A simple approach would be to write a function which passed the elements in question on to BeautifulSoup: def strip_html(input): return BeautifulSoup(input).text‍‍ Then use that function for those elements which contain HTML.