Convert Tables to Unordered Lists

If you've ever had the pleasure of working with old HTML content, you've surely seen some

's where they don't belong. Lately, that's the sort of thing I've been dealing with on a regular basis, and for some reason, I often see a list of information in a table.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were an easy way to turn these tables into unordered lists? Thanks to BeautifulSoup, this is really not that difficult.

Here's the code:

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup, Tag   
  
def table2ul(content, flatten_rows=False):  
    """   
 Convert a <table> into a <ul>.  
 Each cell, <td>, gets converted into a list item <li> unless  
 the flatten\_rows paramter is given. In this case, all content from   
 a table row, <tr>, gets converted into a list item.  
 """  
    soup = BeautifulSoup(content, convertEntities=BeautifulSoup.HTML_ENTITIES, smartQuotesTo="html")  
  
    for table in soup.findAll('table'):  
        ul = Tag(soup, 'ul')  
  
        if flatten_rows:  
            for row in table.findAll('tr'):  
                li = Tag(soup, 'li')  
                for cell in row.findAll('td'):  
                    li.contents.extend(cell.contents)  
                ul.append(li)  
        else:  
            for cell in table.findAll('td'):  
                li = Tag(soup, 'li')  
                li.contents = cell.contents  
                ul.append(li)  
        table.replaceWith(ul)  
  
    return soup.prettify()

Now, suppose we had the following HTML snippet:

<h1>Some heading</h1>  
<p>Some paragraph with stuff in it</p>  
<table>  
<tr><td> row 1, <strong>col1</strong></td><td>row 1, col2</td></tr>  
<tr><td> row 2, col1</td><td><em><a href="http://google.com">row 2</a></em>, col2</td></tr>  
</table>  
  
<h2>A second heading</h2>  
<p>more peee</p>

Passing this in to table2ul would convert each cell into a list item,

>>> table2ul(content)

<h1>  
 Some heading  
</h1>  
<p>  
 Some paragraph with stuff in it  
</p>  
<ul>  
 <li>  
  row 1,  
  <strong>  
   col1  
  </strong>  
 </li>  
 <li>  
  row 1, col2  
 </li>  
 <li>  
  row 2, col1  
 </li>  
 <li>  
  <em>  
   <a href="http://google.com">  
    row 2  
   </a>  
  </em>  
  , col2  
 </li>  
</ul>  
<h2>  
 A second heading  
</h2>  
<p>  
 more peee  
</p>

But what if we don't want each

converted into an <li%gt>? What if we want all the content from entire row in an

? In that case, just set the optional flatten_rows parameter:

>>> table2ul(content, flatten_rows=True)

<h1>  
 Some heading  
</h1>  
<p>  
 Some paragraph with stuff in it  
</p>  
<ul>  
 <li>  
  row 1,  
  <strong>  
   col1  
  </strong>  row 1, col2  
 </li>  
 <li>  
  row 2, col1  
  <em>  
   <a href="http://google.com">  
    row 2  
   </a>  
  </em>  
  , col2  
 </li>  
</ul>  
<h2>  
 A second heading  
</h2>  
<p>  
 more peee  
</p>

This has been somewhat useful for me. Hope it's useful for you!