Node.js Cheerio parser breaks UTF-8 encoding

Question

I parse my request with Cheerio like this:

var url = http://shop.nag.ru/catalog/16939.IP-videonablyudenie-OMNY/16944.IP-kamery-OMNY-c-vario-obektivom/16704.OMNY-1000-PRO;
request.get(url, function (err, response, body) {
  console.log(body);
   $ = cheerio.load(body);
   console.log($(".description").html());
});

And as output I see content but in unreadable strange encoding:

//Plain body console.log(body) (p.s. russian chars): 
<h1><span style="font-size: 16px;">Уличная 3Мп IP HD камера OMNY - попробуйте найти лучше</span></h1><p style

//  cheerio's console.log $(".description").html()
<h1><span style="font-size: 16px;">&#x423;&#x43B;&#x438;&#x447;&#x43D;&#x430;&#x44F; 3&#x41C;&#x43F; IP HD &#x43A;&#x430;&#x43C;&#x435;&#x440;&#x430; OMNY

Target url link coding is in UTF-8 format. So why Cheerio breaks my encoding?

Trying to use iconv to encode my body responce:

var body1 = iconv.decode(body, "utf-8");

but console.log($(".description").html()); still returns weird text.

Answer 1

Cheerio hasn't broken anything. It's outputting HTML entities, which will be rendered by any browser exactly the same as the HTML input. Run this snippet to see what I mean:

<h1><span style="font-size: 16px;">Уличная 3Мп IP HD камера OMNY - попробуйте найти лучше</span></h1>

<h1><span style="font-size: 16px;">&#x423;&#x43B;&#x438;&#x447;&#x43D;&#x430;&#x44F; 3&#x41C;&#x43F; IP HD &#x43A;&#x430;&#x43C;&#x435;&#x440;&#x430; OMNY - &#x43F;&#x43E;&#x43F;&#x440;&#x43E;&#x431;&#x443;&#x439;&#x442;&#x435; &#x43D;&#x430;&#x439;&#x442;&#x438; &#x43B;&#x443;&#x447;&#x448;&#x435;</span></h1>

У, for example, is the character У encoded as an HTML entity, in the same way the entity > represents >.

However, if you want to get the unencoded text, you can set the decodeEntities option to false:

const $ = cheerio.load(
  `<h1><span style="font-size: 16px;">Уличная 3Мп IP HD камера OMNY - попробуйте найти лучше</span></h1>`,
  { decodeEntities: false }
);


console.log($('span').html())
// => Уличная 3Мп IP HD камера OMNY - попробуйте найти лучше

.as-console-wrapper{min-height:100%}

<script src="https://bundle.run/[email protected]"></script>