rvest (version 1.0.4)

html_text: Get element text

Description

There are two ways to retrieve text from a element: html_text() and html_text2(). html_text() is a thin wrapper around xml2::xml_text() which returns just the raw underlying text. html_text2() simulates how text looks in a browser, using an approach inspired by JavaScript's innerText(). Roughly speaking, it converts <br /> to "\n", adds blank lines around <p> tags, and lightly formats tabular data.

html_text2() is usually what you want, but it is much slower than html_text() so for simple applications where performance is important you may want to use html_text() instead.

Usage

html_text(x, trim = FALSE)
html_text2(x, preserve_nbsp = FALSE)

Value

A character vector the same length as x

Arguments

x

A document, node, or node set.

trim

If TRUE will trim leading and trailing spaces.

preserve_nbsp

Should non-breaking spaces be preserved? By default, html_text2() converts to ordinary spaces to ease further computation. When preserve_nbsp is TRUE,   will appear in strings as "\ua0". This often causes confusion because it prints the same way as " ".

Examples

# To understand the difference between html_text() and html_text2()
# take the following html:

html <- minimal_html(
  "This is a paragraph.
    This another sentence.This should start on a new line"
)

# html_text() returns the raw underlying text, which includes whitespace
# that would be ignored by a browser, and ignores the 
html %>% html_element("p") %>% html_text() %>% writeLines()

# html_text2() simulates what a browser would display. Non-significant
# whitespace is collapsed, and  is turned into a line break
html %>% html_element("p") %>% html_text2() %>% writeLines()

# By default, html_text2() also converts non-breaking spaces to regular
# spaces:
html <- minimal_html("x y")
x1 <- html %>% html_element("p") %>% html_text()
x2 <- html %>% html_element("p") %>% html_text2()

# When printed, non-breaking spaces look exactly like regular spaces
x1
x2
# But aren't actually the same:
x1 == x2
# Which you can confirm by looking at their underlying binary
# representaion:
charToRaw(x1)
charToRaw(x2)