Which HTML Parser is the best?
I code a lot of parsers. Up until now, I was using HtmlUnit headless browser for parsing and browser automation.
Now, I want to separate both the tasks.
As 80% of my work involves just parsing, I want to use a light HTML parser because it takes much time in HtmlUnit to first load a page, then get the source and then parse it.
I want to know which HTML parser is the best. The parser would be better if it is close to HtmlUnit parser.
EDIT:
By best, I want at least the following features:
- Speed
- Ease to locate any HtmlElement by its "id" or "name" or "tag type".
It would be ok for me if it doesn't clean the dirty HTML code. I don't need to clean any HTML source. I just need an easiest way to move across HtmlElements and harvest data from them.
Answer
Self plug: I have just released a new Java HTML parser: jsoup. I mention it here because I think it will do what you are after.
Its party trick is a CSS selector syntax to find elements, e.g.:
String html = "<html><head><title>First parse</title></head>"
+ "<body><p>Parsed HTML into a doc.</p></body></html>";
Document doc = Jsoup.parse(html);
Elements links = doc.select("a");
Element head = doc.select("head").first();
See the Selector javadoc for more info.
This is a new project, so any ideas for improvement are very welcome!