html2docx

htmldocx is a small Python library that turns HTML into Microsoft Word DOCX content. Built on top of python-docx and BeautifulSoup, it parses HTML strings or files and writes the resulting headings, paragraphs, tables, lists, images, and inline styling into a Word document.

It is designed to slot into existing python-docx workflows: you can append HTML fragments to a Document object you already control, or convert whole HTML files straight to .docx. Table and paragraph styling can be customized through simple parser attributes.

What You Get

• An HtmlToDocx parser that appends HTML fragments to an existing python-docx Document
• Direct HTML-file-to-DOCX and HTML-string-to-DOCX conversion helpers
• Support for headings, paragraphs, tables, lists, links, images, and inline styling
• Configurable default table and paragraph styles via parser attributes

Common Use Cases

• Generating Word reports from HTML-rendered templates
• Exporting rich-text editor or CMS HTML content to .docx
• Embedding HTML snippets into programmatically assembled Word documents

Under The Hood

Architecture - The library centers on a single HtmlToDocx class in htmldocx/h2d.py that subclasses Python’s standard html.parser.HTMLParser. As it streams start/end tags, it maintains a tag stack and current run/paragraph state, translating each HTML element into python-docx runs, paragraphs, and table cells; BeautifulSoup is used to pre-clean tables before they are walked. Public entry points (add_html_to_document, parse_html_file, parse_html_string) all funnel into the same parsing core.

Tech Stack - Pure Python built on two dependencies: python-docx for writing the Word document model and beautifulsoup4 for HTML parsing of tables. Images referenced by URL are fetched with the standard-library urllib. It targets Python 3 and packages a single module.

Code Quality - The code is a compact single-file parser (~650 lines) with a modest but real test suite under tests/ covering tables and inline code conversion. Style handling relies on regex and inline attribute parsing; there is limited type annotation and error handling is best-effort, reflecting a focused utility rather than a large framework.

API Design - The public API is deliberately small and ergonomic: instantiate HtmlToDocx, then either append HTML to an existing Document or convert a file/string in one call. Styling is configured through plain attributes (table_style, paragraph_style), so getting started requires only a few lines and no boilerplate configuration.