🔍 Code Extractor

Converts inline Markdown syntax (bold, italic, code, links) to HTML tags while escaping HTML entities for safe rendering.

Purpose

This function processes text containing Markdown inline formatting and converts it to equivalent HTML markup. It handles bold (**text**), italic (*text*), inline code (`code`), and links ([text](url)). The function first escapes any existing HTML entities to prevent XSS attacks, then applies regex-based transformations to convert Markdown syntax to HTML tags. This is useful for rendering user-generated Markdown content safely in web applications.

Source Code

def format_inline_markdown(text):
    """Format inline markdown elements like bold, italic, code, links"""
    # Escape HTML entities first
    text = html.escape(text)
    
    # Bold and italic (be careful with order)
    text = re.sub(r'\*\*(.*?)\*\*', r'<strong>\1</strong>', text)
    text = re.sub(r'\*(.*?)\*', r'<em>\1</em>', text)
    
    # Inline code
    text = re.sub(r'`(.*?)`', r'<code>\1</code>', text)
    
    # Links [text](url)
    text = re.sub(r'\[([^\]]*)\]\(([^)]*)\)', r'<a href="\2">\1</a>', text)
    
    return text

Parameters

Parameter Details

text: A string containing Markdown-formatted text with inline elements. Expected to contain Markdown syntax like **bold**, *italic*, `code`, or [link](url). Can be plain text without Markdown syntax, which will only be HTML-escaped. Should be a string type; no explicit validation for None or non-string types.

Return Value

Returns a string containing HTML-formatted text. Markdown inline elements are converted to their HTML equivalents: **text** becomes <strong>text</strong>, *text* becomes <em>text</em>, `code` becomes <code>code</code>, and [text](url) becomes <a href="url">text</a>. All HTML special characters in the original text are escaped (e.g., < becomes &lt;). Returns an empty string if input is empty.

Dependencies

• html
• re

Required Imports

import html
import re

Usage Example

import html
import re

def format_inline_markdown(text):
    text = html.escape(text)
    text = re.sub(r'\*\*(.*?)\*\*', r'<strong>\1</strong>', text)
    text = re.sub(r'\*(.*?)\*', r'<em>\1</em>', text)
    text = re.sub(r'`(.*?)`', r'<code>\1</code>', text)
    text = re.sub(r'\[([^\]]*)\]\(([^)]*)\)', r'<a href="\2">\1</a>', text)
    return text

# Example usage
markdown_text = "This is **bold** and *italic* text with `code` and a [link](https://example.com)"
html_output = format_inline_markdown(markdown_text)
print(html_output)
# Output: This is <strong>bold</strong> and <em>italic</em> text with <code>code</code> and a <a href="https://example.com">link</a>

Best Practices

• The function processes bold before italic to avoid conflicts with nested asterisks (e.g., ***text*** should become <strong><em>text</em></strong>)
• HTML entities are escaped first to prevent XSS attacks when rendering user-generated content
• The regex patterns use non-greedy matching (.*?) to handle multiple inline elements on the same line correctly
• This function only handles inline Markdown elements, not block-level elements like headers, lists, or code blocks
• For nested formatting (e.g., bold within italic), the order of regex substitutions matters and may not handle all edge cases
• Link URLs are not validated or sanitized beyond HTML escaping; consider additional validation for javascript: or data: URLs in production
• Input should be a string; passing None or non-string types will raise an AttributeError

Tags

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