How to Parse HTML

[url]http://blog.objectgraph.com/index.php/2010/02/24/parsing-html-iphone-development/[/url]

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[iPhone Development] How to Parse HTML
On 02.24.10, In code, iphone development, by kiichi

A few weeks ago, I was looking for a simple parser for html in iPhone because I just need to scrape a couple of webpages to get the contents. I found a nice wrapper on this posting, and it’s called hpple. Simple steps to use the library.

Include and Link libxml2

[list]
[*] 1. Expand Targets
[*] 2. Double Click on your project name
[*] 3. Select All Configuration
[*] 4. Search for Header Search Path
[*] 5. Add this line below with recursive option
[*]
[*] ${SDKROOT}/usr/include/libxml2
[*]
[*] 6. Search for Other Linker Flag
[*] 7. Add this line below
[*]
[*] -lxml2
[/list]

See screenshots below

html_include

[img]http://blog.objectgraph.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/html_include.png[/img]

html_linking

[img]http://blog.objectgraph.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/html_linking1.png[/img]


Download Source Codes

git clone git://github.com/topfunky/hpple.git

Then drag and drop following source codes

[list]
[*]TFHpple.h
[*]TFHpple.m
[*]TFHppleElement.h
[*]TFHppleElement.m
[*]XPathQuery.h
[*]XPathQuery.m
[/list]

That’s it. Let’s write some codes.

[NSString stringWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString: @"http://www.objectgraph.com/contact.html"] dataUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
 TFHpple *xpathParser = [[TFHpple alloc] initWithHTMLData:htmlData];
 NSArray *elements  = [xpathParser search:@"//h3"]; // get the page title - this is xpath notation
 TFHppleElement *element = [elements objectAtIndex:0];
 NSString *myTitle = [element content];
 NSLog(myTitle);
 [xpathParser release];
 [htmlData release];

XCode Project Download

Donwnload the complete project file is available here.