---
id: htmltools
version: "0.7.0"
license: MIT License Copyright (c) 2023 Posit Software, PBC Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),… (full text in the JSON record)
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# htmltools — Tools for HTML generation and output.

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 917.1K/mo

## What it is and what it does

htmltools is a Python library for building HTML documents and fragments programmatically. It provides a set of functions and classes to construct HTML elements, nest them, set attributes, and render them to strings. The library is designed for developers who need to generate HTML dynamically from Python code—whether for web applications, templating systems, or documentation generation.

The package depends only on typing-extensions and packaging, keeping its footprint minimal. It supports modern Python versions from 3.10 onward and is actively maintained. The library fits into workflows where HTML generation is a core task but a full templating engine may be overkill, making it suitable for programmatic HTML construction in frameworks, data reporting tools, or custom HTML builders.

Use it for:

- Generate HTML reports or dashboards programmatically from Python data structures.
- Build HTML fragments dynamically in web frameworks or template systems.
- Construct email bodies or HTML documents for automated document generation.
- Create interactive HTML output for Jupyter notebooks or data analysis tools.
- Serialize Python objects to structured HTML for web display or export.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

htmltools provides Python functions to programmatically create, manipulate, and serialize HTML documents and fragments.

Yes. htmltools is a lightweight, actively maintained library with no known vulnerabilities, permissive licensing, and minimal dependencies. It fills a clear niche for programmatic HTML generation in Python. Install it if you need to build HTML dynamically from code rather than using string templates or a heavier templating framework.

## Install

pip install htmltools
uv add htmltools
poetry add htmltools

## Installing htmltools

Before you install: Low install friction with only two lightweight runtime dependencies (typing-extensions and packaging). Active maintenance with a recent release 85 days ago and ongoing repository activity.

License in practice: MIT License permits unrestricted use, modification, and distribution in both open-source and commercial projects, with only the requirement to include the license notice.

Quickstart:

pip install htmltools

from htmltools import HTML, div, p

html_content = div(
    p("Hello, World!"),
    id="container"
)
print(html_content.render())

Requires Python 3.10 or later.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package supports streaming or incremental HTML rendering for large documents.
- Performance characteristics when generating very large HTML structures.
- Availability and completeness of API documentation beyond the repository README.

## Package facts

- License: MIT License Copyright (c) 2023 Posit Software, PBC Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),… (full text in the JSON record) (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 917.1K/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

html generation python, create html programmatically, html manipulation library, python html builder, html serialization, dynamic html output, html templating, html-generation, markup-builder

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/htmltools) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/htmltools/)