So I’m trying to parse school’s website for some info. I’m trying to get some values using xpath. So I found a html 5 parser and it can’t properly parse the first line. Then I figure you it’s actually XHTML and not HTML. After quick Google search I found out XHTML can be properly parsed using any XML parser and so I found one and… It can’t parse the first line. So I ask LLama3.1 (like a real programmer) why I can’t parse the first line with any parser. It explained so nicely that I did not destroy my keyboard when I was told that this document is “XHTML 1.0 Transitional” and it’s a mix of HTML 4 and XHTML and can’t be parsed with HTML nor XML parser. I hate the guy that invented that so much…
So I can’t find a crate to parse XHTML 1.0 transitional? Or a crate to convert xhtml to something else? Any advice?
I would try another HTML 5 parser. HTML 5 is somewhat of a unification of HTML and XHTML, getting into syntax-specifics between the two with XML parsing is probably going to be an uphill battle. That said, I’m curious what the first line is, it could just be malformed entirely.
Thats the first line:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">I thought it was html because it everything on the web is html. But because of the first line I figured out it was xhtml which should be parsed with xml parser, but I did not know the transitional is a mix which cant be parsed with anything.
Hmm, doctype declarations are sort of like the markup equivalent of headers. Usually parsers read them to know what flavor to expect and then go parse the rest of the page separately. You shouldn’t have to do this, but if you chop off that first line and run it through a standard HTML parser it might work fine.
Have you tried some tag soup parser? That should work as a last resort even if the ones building a tree structure don’t.
HTML is hard to parse because it allows mistakes.
I don’t know the answer to your question. But if it was me, I’d run the HTML parser until it encounters an error, manually fix the error, then try to parse again. Until it parses correctly.