[python] What's the easiest way to escape HTML in Python?

cgi.escape extended

This version improves cgi.escape. It also preserves whitespace and newlines. Returns a unicode string.

def escape_html(text):
    """escape strings for display in HTML"""
    return cgi.escape(text, quote=True).\
           replace(u'\n', u'<br />').\
           replace(u'\t', u'&emsp;').\
           replace(u'  ', u' &nbsp;')

for example

>>> escape_html('<foo>\nfoo\t"bar"')
u'&lt;foo&gt;<br />foo&emsp;&quot;bar&quot;'