htmlparser2

A forgiving HTML/XML/RSS parser plus a little extra. The parser can handle streams and provides a callback interface.

🆕 romellem fork:

This fork includes forks from htmlparser2's dependencies:

• domhandler
• domelementtype
• dom-serializer

As well as

• cheerio

The changes in htmlparser2 and cheerio as well as the dependencies mentioned above were all made to create a new special tag that the parser recognizes:

<raw></raw>

It does what the name implies: it leaves any text within the raw tag untouched.

The original repo for cheerio would process the following string as such:

// Original `cheerio` using original `htmlparser2`
var $ = cheerio.load('<raw><?php echo "<strong>" . $hello . "</strong>"; ?></raw>');
var processed_html = $.html();

console.log(processed_html);
// logs '<raw><?php echo "<strong>&quot; . $hello . &quot;&quot;; ?&gt;</raw>'

Notice how it converts some of the quotes to html entities, and also throws out the closing strong tag.

But with my custom additions, we now get

// New `cheerio` which uses new `htmlparser2`
var $ = cheerio.load('<raw><?php echo "<strong>" . $hello . "</strong>"; ?></raw>');
var processed_html = $.html();

console.log(processed_html);
// logs '<?php echo "<strong>" . $hello . "</strong>"; ?>'

So, the raw tag preserved all characters inside, and removed itself after the fact.

Note: I know that this is quote "bad" in the sense that by adding the special raw tag, this is no longer a strict "HTML parser." It is now an HTML parser plus a little extra. However, I had a need for this (specifically, using Foundation for Emails in a more dynamic manner) so I made the necessary modifications to inky's dependencies.

---

Installation

npm install htmlparser2

A live demo of htmlparser2 is available here.

Usage

var htmlparser = require("htmlparser2");
var parser = new htmlparser.Parser({
	onopentag: function(name, attribs){
		if(name === "script" && attribs.type === "text/javascript"){
			console.log("JS! Hooray!");
		}
	},
	ontext: function(text){
		console.log("-->", text);
	},
	onclosetag: function(tagname){
		if(tagname === "script"){
			console.log("That's it?!");
		}
	}
}, {decodeEntities: true});
parser.write("Xyz <script type='text/javascript'>var foo = '<<bar>>';</ script>");
parser.end();

Output (simplified):

--> Xyz
JS! Hooray!
--> var foo = '<<bar>>';
That's it?!

Documentation

Read more about the parser and its options in the wiki.

Get a DOM

The DomHandler (known as DefaultHandler in the original htmlparser module) produces a DOM (document object model) that can be manipulated using the DomUtils helper.

The DomHandler, while still bundled with this module, was moved to its own module. Have a look at it for further information.

Parsing RSS/RDF/Atom Feeds

new htmlparser.FeedHandler(function(<error> error, <object> feed){
    ...
});

Note: While the provided feed handler works for most feeds, you might want to use danmactough/node-feedparser, which is much better tested and actively maintained.

Performance

After having some artificial benchmarks for some time, @AndreasMadsen published his htmlparser-benchmark, which benchmarks HTML parses based on real-world websites.

At the time of writing, the latest versions of all supported parsers show the following performance characteristics on Travis CI (please note that Travis doesn't guarantee equal conditions for all tests):

gumbo-parser   : 34.9208 ms/file ± 21.4238
html-parser    : 24.8224 ms/file ± 15.8703
html5          : 419.597 ms/file ± 264.265
htmlparser     : 60.0722 ms/file ± 384.844
htmlparser2-dom: 12.0749 ms/file ± 6.49474
htmlparser2    : 7.49130 ms/file ± 5.74368
hubbub         : 30.4980 ms/file ± 16.4682
libxmljs       : 14.1338 ms/file ± 18.6541
parse5         : 22.0439 ms/file ± 15.3743
sax            : 49.6513 ms/file ± 26.6032

How does this module differ from node-htmlparser?

This is a fork of the htmlparser module. The main difference is that this is intended to be used only with node (it runs on other platforms using browserify). htmlparser2 was rewritten multiple times and, while it maintains an API that's compatible with htmlparser in most cases, the projects don't share any code anymore.

The parser now provides a callback interface close to sax.js (originally targeted at readabilitySAX). As a result, old handlers won't work anymore.

The DefaultHandler and the RssHandler were renamed to clarify their purpose (to DomHandler and FeedHandler). The old names are still available when requiring htmlparser2, your code should work as expected.