Provided by: tcllib_1.17-dfsg-1_all 
NAME
htmlparse - Procedures to parse HTML strings
SYNOPSIS
package require Tcl 8.2
package require struct::stack 1.3
package require cmdline 1.1
package require htmlparse ?1.2.1?
::htmlparse::parse ?-cmd cmd? ?-vroot tag? ?-split n? ?-incvar var? ?-queue q? html
::htmlparse::debugCallback ?clientdata? tag slash param textBehindTheTag
::htmlparse::mapEscapes html
::htmlparse::2tree html tree
::htmlparse::removeVisualFluff tree
::htmlparse::removeFormDefs tree
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
DESCRIPTION
The htmlparse package provides commands that allow libraries and applications to parse
HTML in a string into a representation of their choice.
The following commands are available:
::htmlparse::parse ?-cmd cmd? ?-vroot tag? ?-split n? ?-incvar var? ?-queue q? html
This command is the basic parser for HTML. It takes an HTML string, parses it and
invokes a command prefix for every tag encountered. It is not necessary for the
HTML to be valid for this parser to function. It is the responsibility of the
command invoked for every tag to check this. Another responsibility of the invoked
command is the handling of tag attributes and character entities (escaped
characters). The parser provides the un-interpreted tag attributes to the invoked
command to aid in the former, and the package at large provides a helper command,
::htmlparse::mapEscapes, to aid in the handling of the latter. The parser does
ignore leading DOCTYPE declarations and all valid HTML comments it encounters.
All information beyond the HTML string itself is specified via options, these are
explained below.
To help understand the options, some more background information about the parser.
It is capable of detecting incomplete tags in the HTML string given to it. Under
normal circumstances this will cause the parser to throw an error, but if the
option -incvar is used to specify a global (or namespace) variable, the parser will
store the incomplete part of the input into this variable instead. This will aid
greatly in the handling of incrementally arriving HTML, as the parser will handle
whatever it can and defer the handling of the incomplete part until more data has
arrived.
Another feature of the parser are its two possible modes of operation. The normal
mode is activated if the option -queue is not present on the command line invoking
the parser. If it is present, the parser will go into the incremental mode instead.
The main difference is that a parser in normal mode will immediately invoke the
command prefix for each tag it encounters. In incremental mode however the parser
will generate a number of scripts which invoke the command prefix for groups of
tags in the HTML string and then store these scripts in the specified queue. It is
then the responsibility of the caller of the parser to ensure the execution of the
scripts in the queue.
Note: The queue object given to the parser has to provide the same interface as the
queue defined in tcllib -> struct. This means, for example, that all queues created
via that tcllib module can be immediately used here. Still, the queue doesn't have
to come from tcllib -> struct as long as the same interface is provided.
In both modes the parser will return an empty string to the caller.
The -split option may be given to a parser in incremental mode to specify the size
of the groups it creates. In other words, -split 5 means that each of the generated
scripts will invoke the command prefix for 5 consecutive tags in the HTML string. A
parser in normal mode will ignore this option and its value.
The option -vroot specifies a virtual root tag. A parser in normal mode will invoke
the command prefix for it immediately before and after it processes the tags in the
HTML, thus simulating that the HTML string is enclosed in a <vroot> </vroot>
combination. In incremental mode however the parser is unable to provide the
closing virtual root as it never knows when the input is complete. In this case the
first script generated by each invocation of the parser will contain an invocation
of the command prefix for the virtual root as its first command. The following
options are available:
-cmd cmd
The command prefix to invoke for every tag in the HTML string. Defaults to
::htmlparse::debugCallback.
-vroot tag
The virtual root tag to add around the HTML in normal mode. In incremental
mode it is the first tag in each chunk processed by the parser, but there
will be no closing tags. Defaults to hmstart.
-split n
The size of the groups produced by an incremental mode parser. Ignored when
in normal mode. Defaults to 10. Values <= 0 are not allowed.
-incvar var
The name of the variable where to store any incomplete HTML into. This makes
most sense for the incremental mode. The parser will throw an error if it
sees incomplete HTML and has no place to store it to. This makes sense for
the normal mode. Only incomplete tags are detected, not missing tags.
Optional, defaults to 'no variable'.
Interface to the command prefix
In normal mode the parser will invoke the command prefix with four arguments
appended. See ::htmlparse::debugCallback for a description.
In incremental mode, however, the generated scripts will invoke the command
prefix with five arguments appended. The last four of these are the same
which were mentioned above. The first is a placeholder string (@win@) for a
clientdata value to be supplied later during the actual execution of the
generated scripts. This could be a tk window path, for example. This allows
the user of this package to preprocess HTML strings without committing them
to a specific window, object, whatever during parsing. This connection can
be made later. This also means that it is possible to cache preprocessed
HTML. Of course, nothing prevents the user of the parser from replacing the
placeholder with an empty string.
::htmlparse::debugCallback ?clientdata? tag slash param textBehindTheTag
This command is the standard callback used by the parser in ::htmlparse::parse if
none was specified by the user. It simply dumps its arguments to stdout. This
callback can be used for both normal and incremental mode of the calling parser. In
other words, it accepts four or five arguments. The last four arguments are
described below. The optional fifth argument contains the clientdata value passed
to the callback by a parser in incremental mode. All callbacks have to follow the
signature of this command in the last four arguments, and callbacks used in
incremental parsing have to follow this signature in the last five arguments.
The first argument, clientdata, is optional and present only if this command is
invoked by a parser in incremental mode. It contains whatever the user of this
package wishes.
The second argument, tag, contains the name of the tag which is currently processed
by the parser.
The third argument, slash, is either empty or contains a slash character. It allows
the callback to distinguish between opening (slash is empty) and closing tags
(slash contains a slash character).
The fourth argument, param, contains the un-interpreted list of parameters to the
tag.
The fifth and last argument, textBehindTheTag, contains the text found by the
parser behind the tag named in tag.
::htmlparse::mapEscapes html
This command takes a HTML string, substitutes all escape sequences with their
actual characters and then returns the resulting string. HTML strings which do not
contain escape sequences are returned unchanged.
::htmlparse::2tree html tree
This command is a wrapper around ::htmlparse::parse which takes an HTML string (in
html) and converts it into a tree containing the logical structure of the parsed
document. The name of the tree is given to the command as its second argument
(tree). The command does not generate the tree by itself but expects that the
caller provided it with an existing and empty tree. It also expects that the
specified tree object follows the same interface as the tree object in tcllib ->
struct. It doesn't have to be from tcllib -> struct, but it must provide the same
interface.
The internal callback does some basic checking of HTML validity and tries to
recover from the most basic errors. The command returns the contents of its second
argument. Side effects are the creation and manipulation of a tree object.
Each node in the generated tree represent one tag in the input. The name of the tag
is stored in the attribute type of the node. Any html attributes coming with the
tag are stored unmodified in the attribute data of the tag. In other words, the
command does not parse html attributes into their names and values.
If a tag contains text its node will have children of type PCDATA containing this
text. The text will be stored in the attribute data of these children.
::htmlparse::removeVisualFluff tree
This command walks a tree as generated by ::htmlparse::2tree and removes all the
nodes which represent visual tags and not structural ones. The purpose of the
command is to make the tree easier to navigate without getting bogged down in
visual information not relevant to the search. Its only argument is the name of the
tree to cut down.
::htmlparse::removeFormDefs tree
Like ::htmlparse::removeVisualFluff this command is here to cut down on the size of
the tree as generated by ::htmlparse::2tree. It removes all nodes representing
forms and form elements. Its only argument is the name of the tree to cut down.
BUGS, IDEAS, FEEDBACK
This document, and the package it describes, will undoubtedly contain bugs and other
problems. Please report such in the category htmlparse of the Tcllib Trackers
[http://core.tcl.tk/tcllib/reportlist]. Please also report any ideas for enhancements you
may have for either package and/or documentation.
SEE ALSO
struct::tree
KEYWORDS
html, parsing, queue, tree
CATEGORY
Text processing