Unescaping html entities

gistfile1.py

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#	John J. Lee, http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t511850-how-do-you-htmlentities-in-python.html
#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

import htmlentitydefs
import re

def unescape_charref(ref):
	name = ref[2:-1]
	base = 10
	if name.startswith("x"):
		name = name[1:]
		base = 16
	return unichr(int(name, base))

def replace_entities(match):
	ent = match.group()
	if ent[1] == "#":
		return unescape_charref(ent)
	
	repl = htmlentitydefs.name2codepoint.get(ent[1:-1])
	if repl is not None:
		repl = unichr(repl)
	else:
		repl = ent
	return repl

def unescape(data):
	return re.sub(r"&#?[A-Za-z0-9]+?;", replace_entities, data)