# File: htmlentitydefs-example-3.py

import htmlentitydefs
import re, string

# this pattern matches substrings of reserved and non-ASCII characters
pattern = re.compile(r"[&<>\"\x80-\xff]+")

# create character map
entity_map = {}

for i in range(256):
    entity_map[chr(i)] = "&#%d;" % i

for entity, char in htmlentitydefs.entitydefs.items():
    if entity_map.has_key(char):
        entity_map[char] = "&%s;" % entity

def escape_entity(m, get=entity_map.get):
    return string.join(map(get, m.group()), "")

def escape(string):
    return pattern.sub(escape_entity, string)

print escape("<spam&eggs>")
print escape("å i åa ä e ö")

## $ python htmlentitydefs-example-3.py
## &lt;spam&amp;eggs&gt;
## &aring; i &aring;a &auml; e &ouml;