html2text

Converts HTML into text of the markdown-flavored variety

Note on this fork

This fork removes the backwards-incompatible TextOnly change from the original repo and ensures that we'll have no future backwards-incompatible surprises going forward.

Introduction

Ensure your emails are readable by all!

Turns HTML into raw text, useful for sending fancy HTML emails with an equivalently nicely formatted TXT document as a fallback (e.g. for people who don't allow HTML emails or have other display issues).

html2text is a simple golang package for rendering HTML into plaintext.

There are still lots of improvements to be had, but FWIW this has worked fine for my [basic] HTML-2-text needs.

It requires go 1.x or newer 😉

Download the package

go get jaytaylor.com/html2text

Example usage

Library

package main

import (
	"fmt"

	"jaytaylor.com/html2text"
)

func main() {
	inputHTML := `

  
    <title>My Mega Service</title>
    
    <style type="\&quot;text/css\&quot;">body { color: #fff; }</style>
  

  
    <div class="logo">
      <a href="https://jaytaylor.com/"><img alt="Mega Service" src="/logo-image.jpg"></a>
    </div>

    <h1>Welcome to your new account on my service!</h1>

    <p>
      Here is some more information:

      </p><ul>
        <li>Link 1: <a href="https://example.com">Example.com</a></li>
        <li>Link 2: <a href="https://example2.com">Example2.com</a></li>
        <li>Something else</li>
      </ul>
    <p></p>

    <table>
      <thead>
        <tr><th>Header 1</th><th>Header 2</th></tr>
      </thead>
      <tfoot>
        <tr><td>Footer 1</td><td>Footer 2</td></tr>
      </tfoot>
      <tbody>
        <tr><td>Row 1 Col 1</td><td>Row 1 Col 2</td></tr>
        <tr><td>Row 2 Col 1</td><td>Row 2 Col 2</td></tr>
      </tbody>
    </table>
  
`

	text, err := html2text.FromString(inputHTML, html2text.Options{PrettyTables: true})
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	fmt.Println(text)
}

Output:

Mega Service ( https://jaytaylor.com/ )

******************************************
Welcome to your new account on my service!
******************************************

Here is some more information:

* Link 1: Example.com ( https://example.com )
* Link 2: Example2.com ( https://example2.com )
* Something else

+-------------+-------------+
|  HEADER 1   |  HEADER 2   |
+-------------+-------------+
| Row 1 Col 1 | Row 1 Col 2 |
| Row 2 Col 1 | Row 2 Col 2 |
+-------------+-------------+
|  FOOTER 1   |  FOOTER 2   |
+-------------+-------------+

Command line

echo '<div>hi</div>' | html2text

Unit-tests

Running the unit-tests is straightforward and standard:

go test

License

Permissive MIT license.

Contact

You are more than welcome to open issues and send pull requests if you find a bug or want a new feature.

If you appreciate this library please feel free to drop me a line and tell me! It's always nice to hear from people who have benefitted from my work.

Email: jay at (my github username).com

Twitter: @jtaylor

Alternatives

https://github.com/k3a/html2text - Lightweight