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# html2text
html2text is a [Rust](http://www.rust-lang.org/) crate which converts HTML to
plain text (as in Rust `String`) or text spans with annotations like colours,
e.g. optionally using CSS. See [the online demo](https://jugglerchris.github.io/rust-html2text/)
for examples of the output.
`cargo install html2text-cli` will install the `html2text` CLI wrapper.
It makes use of the [Servo project](https://github.com/servo/servo)'s HTML
parser, [html5ever](https://github.com/servo/html5ever/), using the DOM to
generate text (which can optionally include annotations for some features such
as hyperlinks).
The project aims to do a reasonable job of rendering reasonable HTML in a
terminal or other places where HTML needs to be converted to text (for
example the text/plain fallback in HTML e-mails).
With feature flags enabled (see below) some CSS/colour support is available.
## Examples
The simple functions like `from_read()` return formatted text (in various
formats including plain text).
```rust
use html2text::from_read;
let html = b"
<ul>
<li>Item one</li>
<li>Item two</li>
<li>Item three</li>
</ul>";
assert_eq!(from_read(&html[..], 20).unwrap(),
"\
* Item one
* Item two
* Item three
");
```
A lower level API gives a bit more control. This give the same result (except for
returning errors as Result instead of panicking):
```rust
use html2text::config;
let html = b"
<ul>
<li>Item one</li>
<li>Item two</li>
<li>Item three</li>
</ul>";
assert_eq!(
config::plain()
.string_from_read(&html[..], 20)
.unwrap(),
"\
* Item one
* Item two
* Item three
");
```
A couple of simple demonstration programs are included as examples:
### html2text
The simplest example uses `from_read` to convert HTML on stdin into plain
text:
```sh
$ cargo run --example html2text < foo.html
[...]
```
### html2term
A very simple example of using the rich interface (`from_read_rich`) for a
slightly interactive console HTML viewer is provided as `html2term`.
```sh
$ cargo run --example html2term foo.html
[...]
```
Note that this example takes the HTML file as a parameter so that it can
read keys from stdin.
## Cargo Features
|css | Limited handling of CSS, adding Coloured nodes to the render tree. |
|css\_ext| Some CSS extensions (see below for details) |
|xml | Support XHTML (for cases where a document may be parsed differently than as HTML). |
|html\_trace| Add verbose internal logging (not recommended) |
|html\_trace\_bt| Add backtraces to the verbose internal logging |
### CSS support
When the `css` feature is enabled, some simple CSS handling is available.
Style rules are taken from:
* If `Config::use_doc_css()` is called, then style from the document:
* `<style>` elements
* Inline `style` attributes (`<div style="...">`)
* `<font color=...>`
* Independently of `use_doc_css`, extra rules can be added with `Config::add_css(...)`
The following CSS features are implemented:
* Basic selector matching (including child and descendents, classes and element
types).
* Attribute selectors including `[foo]` and `[foo="bar"]`
* `nth-child` pseudo-class.
* CSS colors (`color`/`background-color`) will add
`Coloured(...)`/`BgColoured(...)` nodes to the render tree.
* Rules with `display: none` will cause matching elements to be removed from
the render tree. The same is true if `overflow: hidden` or `overflow-y: hidden` and
the `height` or `max-height` are 0.
* `content: "text"` inside a `::before`/`::after`
* `white-space` values "normal", "pre", and "prewrap"
The CSS handling is expected to improve in future (PRs welcome), but not to a full-
blown browser style system, which would be overkill for terminal output.
There are two ways to make use of the colours:
* Use `from_read_rich()` or one of its variants. One of the annotations you may get
back is `Colour(..)`.
* Use `from_read_coloured()`. This is similar to `from_read()`, but you provide
a function to add terminal colours (or other styling) based on the same
RichAnnotations. See examples/html2text.rs for an example using termion.
### CSS extensions (`css\_ext` Cargo feature)
The following CSS extensions are implemented:
* `x-syntax: foo;`
- Syntax-highlight with language "foo". A highlighter needs to be registered
for that language with `config::register_highlighter()` - see the
`html2text-cli` for an example using `syntect`.
* `display: x-raw-dom;`
- Show the HTML elements instead of rendering them. (Useful for debugging, along
with something like `:nth-child(...)` to select a particular node)
### XML/XHTML support
In some rare cases, parsing an XHTML document as HTML behaves differently. For example:
```xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<body>
<h1/>
<p>Not Heading</p>
</body>
</html>
```
HTML does not have the self-closing `<h1/>` form, so this would parse as an
unclosed `<h1>` element, containing the following `<p>`, but in XHTML this is parsed as an empty `<h1>` followed by a `<p>`.
With the `xml` Cargo feature enabled, by default documents are parsed as XHTML
if they start with the `<?xml?>` declaration and HTML otherwise. This can be
configured with `Config::xml_mode()`.