html-query: A fluent and functional approach to querying HTML DOM

html-query is a Go package that provides a fluent and functional interface for querying HTML DOM. It is based on golang.org/x/net/html.

Examples

1. A simple example (under "examples" directory)

    r := get(`http://blog.golang.org/index`)
    defer r.Close()
    root, err := query.Parse(r)
    checkError(err)
    root.Div(Id("content")).Children(Class("blogtitle")).For(func(item *query.Node) {
        href := item.Ahref().Href()
        date := item.Span(Class("date")).Text()
        tags := item.Span(Class("tags")).Text()
        // ......
    })

2. Generator of html-query (under "gen" directory)

   A large part of html-query is automatically generated from HTML spec. The spec is in HTML format, so the generator parses it using html-query itself.

Design

Here is a simple explanation of the design of html-query.

Functional query expressions

All functional definitions are defined in html-query/expr package.

1. Checker and checker composition

   A checker is a function that accept and conditionally returns a *html.Node.

    type Checker func(*html.Node) *html.Node

Here are some checker examples:

    Id("id1")
    Class("c1")
    Div
    Abbr
    H1
    H2

Checkers can be combined as boolean expressions:

    And(Id("id1"), Class("c1"))
    Or(Class("c1"), Class("c2"))
    And(Class("c1"), Not(Class("c2")))

2. Checker builder

   A checker builder is a function that returns a checker. "Id", "Class", "And", "Or", "Not" shown above are all checker builders. There are also some checker builder builder (function that returns a checker builder) defined in html-query when needed.

Fluent interface

Fluent interface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface) are defined in html-query package.

1. Root node

   Function Parse returns the root node of an html document.

2. Node finder

   Method Node.Find implements a BFS search for a node, e.g.

    node.Find(Div, Class("id1"))

But usually you can write the short form:

    node.Div(Class("id1"))

3. Attribute getter

   Method Node.Attr can be used to get the value (or a regular expression submatch of the value) of a node, e.g.

    node.Attr("Id")
    node.Attr("href", "\(.*)")

But usually you can write the short form:

    node.Id()
    node.Href("\(.*)")

4. Node iterator

   Method Node.Children and Node.Descendants each returns a node iterator (NodeIter). Method NodeIter.For can be used to loop through these nodes.

Alternative

If you prefer a jquery like DSL rather than functional way, you might want to try goquery: https://github.com/PuerkitoBio/goquery.