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.
html_text(x, trim = FALSE) html_text2(x, preserve_nbsp = FALSE)
x | A document, node, or node set. |
---|---|
trim | If |
preserve_nbsp | Should non-breaking spaces be preserved? By default,
|
A character vector the same length as x
# To understand the difference between html_text() and html_text2() # take the following html: html <- minimal_html( "<p>This is a paragraph. This another sentence.<br>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 <br> html %>% html_element("p") %>% html_text() %>% writeLines() #> This is a paragraph. #> This another sentence.This should start on a new line # html_text2() simulates what a browser would display. Non-significant # whitespace is collapsed, and <br> is turned into a line break html %>% html_element("p") %>% html_text2() %>% writeLines() #> This is a paragraph. This another sentence. #> This should start on a new line # By default, html_text2() also converts non-breaking spaces to regular # spaces: html <- minimal_html("<p>x y</p>") 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 #> [1] "x y" x2 #> [1] "x y" # But aren't actually the same: x1 == x2 #> [1] FALSE # Which you can confirm by looking at their underlying binary # representaion: charToRaw(x1) #> [1] 78 c2 a0 79 charToRaw(x2) #> [1] 78 20 79