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**Category:** ruby-talk\
**Created:** [2 February 2004 12:42 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/html-parsing/9961 "2004-02-02T12:42:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1
**Author:**  [@Gavin\_Sinclair](https://rubytalk.org/u/Gavin_Sinclair)\
**Post date:** [2 February 2004 12:42 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/html-parsing/9961/1 "2004-02-02T12:42:17Z")
Hi folks,
I need to parse some HTML. I’ve dug around the archives and so on and
found the best solution to be Ned Konz’s ‘ruby-htmltools’, which
relies on ‘html-parser’. Both of these projects are not really
maintained, so I’m wondering what other people currently use.
Cheers,
Gavin
---
**Author:**  [@Emmanuel\_Touzery](https://rubytalk.org/u/Emmanuel_Touzery)\
**Post date:** [2 February 2004 12:48 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/html-parsing/9961/2 "2004-02-02T12:48:00Z")
Gavin Sinclair wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I need to parse some HTML. I’ve dug around the archives and so on and
> found the best solution to be Ned Konz’s ‘ruby-htmltools’, which
> relies on ‘html-parser’. Both of these projects are not really
> maintained, so I’m wondering what other people currently use.
i was using a home-made solution, but i just decided (this WE) to
convert it to REXML: I would use HTML tidy (which is already needed for
~60% of the pages i’m parsing now), and ask tidy to spit out XHTML. i
think that’s the best (with my home made solution, besides the
duplication of work of parsing HTML, i needed a list of tags that you
don’t need to close etc. in XHTML all is done for me… and then i get
the familiar API of REXML [even though i never used REXML yet :O)]).
i think it’s the best.
emmanuel
---
**Author:**  [@Robert](https://rubytalk.org/u/Robert)\
**Post date:** [2 February 2004 13:59 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/html-parsing/9961/3 "2004-02-02T13:59:57Z")
“Gavin Sinclair” [gsinclair@soyabean.com.au](mailto:gsinclair@soyabean.com.au) schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:541813804653.20040202234122@soyabean.com.au…
> Hi folks,
>
> I need to parse some HTML. I’ve dug around the archives and so on and
> found the best solution to be Ned Konz’s ‘ruby-htmltools’, which
> relies on ‘html-parser’. Both of these projects are not really
> maintained, so I’m wondering what other people currently use.
Last time I needed that I used some kind of home cooked regexp scanning.
But I didn’t need a real parser, just wanted to extract some portion from
the HTML file.
```
robert
```
---
**Author:**  [@Emmanuel\_Touzery](https://rubytalk.org/u/Emmanuel_Touzery)\
**Post date:** [2 February 2004 12:48 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/html-parsing/9961/4 "2004-02-02T12:48:38Z")
Emmanuel Touzery wrote:
> E) to convert it to REXML: I would use HTML tidy (which is already
> needed for ~60% of the pages i’m parsing now)
(it was needed for many pages due to sloppy/invalid HTML, that tidy is
correcting)
emmanuel
---
**Author:**  [@Gavin\_Sinclair](https://rubytalk.org/u/Gavin_Sinclair)\
**Post date:** [2 February 2004 14:03 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/html-parsing/9961/5 "2004-02-02T14:03:12Z")
The library I mentioned gives you a REXML::Document as well, so I’m
using REXML for the first time. It’s very good, but I’m struggling to
really get a grip.
The single most useful improvement to REXML for a beginner, IMO, is
this: (more) reasonable implementations of #to\_s and/or #inspect on
Element and Attribute objects.
As it is, I believe every element contains a link to its document,
which in my case is large, and #inspect spits out thousands of lines
of rubbish when all I want to see is the element I’m looking at. This
makes it hard to use in ‘irb’.
(I know, I should start with a small document, but I’m trying to get
my task done 🙂
Cheers,
Gavin
> **···**
>
> On Monday, February 2, 2004, 11:48:00 PM, Emmanuel wrote:
>
> > Gavin Sinclair wrote:
>
> > > Hi folks,
> > >
> > > I need to parse some HTML. I’ve dug around the archives and so on and
> > > found the best solution to be Ned Konz’s ‘ruby-htmltools’, which
> > > relies on ‘html-parser’. Both of these projects are not really
> > > maintained, so I’m wondering what other people currently use.
> >
> > i was using a home-made solution, but i just decided (this WE) to
> > convert it to REXML: I would use HTML tidy (which is already needed for
> > ~60% of the pages i’m parsing now), and ask tidy to spit out XHTML. i
> > think that’s the best (with my home made solution, besides the
> > duplication of work of parsing HTML, i needed a list of tags that you
> > don’t need to close etc. in XHTML all is done for me… and then i get
> > the familiar API of REXML [even though i never used REXML yet :O)]).