htmlparser/htmlparser

---

htmlparser/htmlparser.json

{
  "createdAt": "2020-07-18T23:07:05Z",
  "defaultBranch": "master",
  "description": "Parsing HTML at the command line",
  "fullName": "htmlparser/htmlparser",
  "homepage": "",
  "language": "HTML",
  "name": "htmlparser",
  "pushedAt": "2022-06-28T07:08:56Z",
  "stargazersCount": 25,
  "topics": [],
  "updatedAt": "2025-03-19T18:19:45Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/htmlparser/htmlparser"
}

htmlparser

htmlparser is a command line tool for processing HTML. It reads from stdin, prints to stdout, and allows the user to filter parts of the page using CSS selectors.

Inspired by jq, htmlparser aims to be a fast and flexible way of exploring HTML from the terminal.

Install

Direct downloads are available through the releases page.

If you have Go installed on your computer just run go get.

go get github.com/htmlparser/htmlparser

If you’re on OS X, use Homebrew to install (no Go required).

brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/htmlparser/htmlparser/master/htmlparser.rb

Quick start

$ curl -s https://news.ycombinator.com/

Ew, HTML. Let’s run that through some htmlparser selectors:

$ curl -s https://news.ycombinator.com/ | htmlparser 'table table tr:nth-last-of-type(n+2) td.title a'

Okay, how about only the links?

$ curl -s https://news.ycombinator.com/ | htmlparser 'table table tr:nth-last-of-type(n+2) td.title a attr{href}'

Even better, let’s grab the titles too:

$ curl -s https://news.ycombinator.com/ | htmlparser 'table table tr:nth-last-of-type(n+2) td.title a json{}'

Basic Usage

$ cat index.html | htmlparser [flags] '[selectors] [display function]'

Examples

Download a webpage with wget.

$ wget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard -O robots.html

Clean and indent

By default htmlparser will fill in missing tags and properly indent the page.

$ cat robots.html
# nasty looking HTML
$ cat robots.html | htmlparser --color
# cleaned, indented, and colorful HTML

Filter by tag

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser 'title'
<title>
 Robots exclusion standard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
</title>

Filter by id

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser 'span#See_also'
<span class="mw-headline" id="See_also">
 See also
</span>

Filter by attribute

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser 'th[scope="row"]'
<th scope="row" class="navbox-group">
 Exclusion standards
</th>
<th scope="row" class="navbox-group">
 Related marketing topics
</th>
<th scope="row" class="navbox-group">
 Search marketing related topics
</th>
<th scope="row" class="navbox-group">
 Search engine spam
</th>
<th scope="row" class="navbox-group">
 Linking
</th>
<th scope="row" class="navbox-group">
 People
</th>
<th scope="row" class="navbox-group">
 Other
</th>

Pseudo Classes

CSS selectors have a group of specifiers called [“pseudo classes”]!( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Pseudo-classes) which are pretty cool. htmlparser implements a majority of the relevant ones them.

Here are some examples.

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser 'a[rel] !:empty'
<a rel="license" href="//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" style="display:none;">
</a>

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser ':contains("History")'
<span class="toctext">
 History
</span>
<span class="mw-headline" id="History">
 History
</span>

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser ':parent-of([action="edit"])'
<span class="wb-langlinks-edit wb-langlinks-link">
 <a action="edit" href="//www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80776#sitelinks-wikipedia" text="Edit links" title="Edit interlanguage links" class="wbc-editpage">
  Edit links
 </a>
</span>

For a complete list, view the implemented selectors section.

+, >, and ,

These are intermediate characters that declare special instructions. For instance, a comma , allows htmlparser to specify multiple groups of selectors.

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser 'title, h1 span[dir="auto"]'
<title>
 Robots exclusion standard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
</title>
<span dir="auto">
 Robots exclusion standard
</span>

Chain selectors together

When combining selectors, the HTML nodes selected by the previous selector will be passed to the next ones.

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser 'h1#firstHeading'
<h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading" lang="en">
 <span dir="auto">
  Robots exclusion standard
 </span>
</h1>

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser 'h1#firstHeading span'
<span dir="auto">
 Robots exclusion standard
</span>

Implemented Selectors

For further examples of these selectors head over to [MDN]!( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference).

htmlparser '.class'
htmlparser '#id'
htmlparser 'element'
htmlparser 'selector + selector'
htmlparser 'selector > selector'
htmlparser '[attribute]'
htmlparser '[attribute="value"]'
htmlparser '[attribute*="value"]'
htmlparser '[attribute~="value"]'
htmlparser '[attribute^="value"]'
htmlparser '[attribute$="value"]'
htmlparser ':empty'
htmlparser ':first-child'
htmlparser ':first-of-type'
htmlparser ':last-child'
htmlparser ':last-of-type'
htmlparser ':only-child'
htmlparser ':only-of-type'
htmlparser ':contains("text")'
htmlparser ':nth-child(n)'
htmlparser ':nth-of-type(n)'
htmlparser ':nth-last-child(n)'
htmlparser ':nth-last-of-type(n)'
htmlparser ':not(selector)'
htmlparser ':parent-of(selector)'

You can mix and match selectors as you wish.

cat index.html | htmlparser 'element#id[attribute="value"] !:first-of-type'

Display Functions

Non-HTML selectors which effect the output type are implemented as functions which can be provided as a final argument.

text{}

Print all text from selected nodes and children in depth first order.

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser '.mw-headline text{}'
History
About the standard
Disadvantages
Alternatives
Examples
Nonstandard extensions
Crawl-delay directive
Allow directive
Sitemap
Host
Universal "*" match
Meta tags and headers
See also
References
External links

attr{attrkey}

Print the values of all attributes with a given key from all selected nodes.

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser '.catlinks div attr{id}'
mw-normal-catlinks
mw-hidden-catlinks

json{}

Print HTML as JSON.

$ cat robots.html  | htmlparser 'div#p-namespaces a'
<a href="/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard" title="View the content page [c]" accesskey="c">
 Article
</a>
<a href="/wiki/Talk:Robots_exclusion_standard" rel="discussion" title="Discussion about the content page [t]" accesskey="t">
 Talk
</a>

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser 'div#p-namespaces a json{}'
[
 {
  "attrs": {
   "accesskey": "c",
   "children": [
    {
     "text": "Article"
    }
   ],
   "href": "/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard",
   "title": "View the content page [c]"
  },
  "tag": "a",
 },
 {
  "attrs": {
   "accesskey": "t",
   "children": [
    {
     "text": "Talk"
    }
   ],
   "href": "/wiki/Talk:Robots_exclusion_standard",
   "rel": "discussion",
   "title": "Discussion about the content page [t]"
  },
  "rel": "discussion",
  "tag": "a",
 }
]

Use the -i / --indent flag to control the intent level.

$ cat robots.html | htmlparser -i 4 'div#p-namespaces a json{}'
[
    {
        "attrs": {
            "accesskey": "c",
            "children": [
                {
                    "text": "Article"
                }
            ],
            "href": "/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard",
            "title": "View the content page [c]"
        },
        "tag": "a",
    },
    {
        "attrs": {
            "accesskey": "t",
            "children": [
                {
                    "text": "Talk"
                }
            ],
            "href": "/wiki/Talk:Robots_exclusion_standard",
            "rel": "discussion",
            "title": "Discussion about the content page [t]"
        },
        "rel": "discussion",
        "tag": "a",
    }
]

Because there is no universal standard for converting HTML/XML to JSON, a method has been chosen which hopefully fits. The goal is simply to get the output of htmlparser into a more consumable format.

Flags

Run htmlparser --help for a list of further options