HTML List Extraction

The list tool extracts ordered, unordered, and definition lists from HTML pages and writes them to CSV or JSON.

Supported sources

extract_lists and scrape lists accept:

• a local HTML file path

• an HTTP or HTTPS URL

Supported list types

Tag	Description
ul	Unordered list — one item column in CSV
ol	Ordered list — one item column in CSV
dl	Definition list — term/description cols

Nested lists are flattened: only the text of the outer list item is kept.

Output model

Each list becomes one record:

• HtmlList for ul/ol — holds a flat items: list[str]

• HtmlDefinitionList for dl — holds items: list[dict[str, str]] where each dict has term and description keys

Example JSON output:

[
  {"tag": "ul", "items": ["Alpha", "Beta"]},
  {"tag": "dl", "items": [{"term": "Python", "description": "A language."}]}
]

Output filename

When no output path is supplied, scrape-smith writes to a safe filename based on the source:

page.html -> page-lists.csv

If that filename already exists, a numeric suffix is added, such as page-lists-2.csv.