rustedbytes-tl

A lightweight HTML parser written in Rust. It borrows input bytes and offers allocation-free bounded parsing by default, or heap-backed DOMs and CSS queries with std. The Rust crate is imported as tl.

This README describes the current Git source. The source contains breaking changes since the published 0.2.0 API; the first release containing them must be 0.3.x or later. See Cargo.toml for the version selected for the next release. The published 0.2.0 API reference does not describe all APIs below. Generate current API docs with cargo doc --features entities --open.

Getting started

Use the current source with heap-backed parsing:

[dependencies]
rustedbytes-tl = { git = "https://github.com/RustedBytes/rustedbytes-tl", features = ["std"] }

Commit your application's Cargo.lock to retain the resolved Git revision.

# #[cfg(feature = "std")] {
let html = "<ul><li><a href='/item'>Item</a></li></ul>";
let dom = tl::parse(html, tl::ParserOptions::default()).unwrap();
let handle = dom.query_selector("ul > li a[href]").unwrap().next().unwrap();
let node = handle.get(dom.parser()).unwrap();
assert_eq!(node.inner_text(dom.parser()), "Item");
let tag = node.as_tag().unwrap();
let href = tag.attributes().get("href").unwrap().unwrap();
assert_eq!(href.as_bytes(), b"/item");
# }

Keep html alive for every use of the borrowed DOM. If the DOM must own its input, use the safe tl::VDomGuard::parse(String, ParserOptions) constructor. See the usage guide for owned input, attributes, decoded text, query errors and bounded parsing.

Features

__INTERNALS_DO_NOT_USE exposes instrumentation internals and is not a supported application feature. Stable builds should select features explicitly rather than use --all-features, which enables nightly-only portable-simd.

Scope and documentation

The parser does not implement the complete HTML5 tree-building algorithm. Malformed HTML can produce a different tree from a browser; omitted tbody elements are not inserted. CSS support is a subset, and text extraction does not implement browser layout or visibility rules. HTML parsing and text extraction do not sanitize untrusted content.

• Usage guide: executable examples and API behavior.
• Development guide: feature checks, docs, benchmarks and troubleshooting.
• Migration and silkworm compatibility: supported selectors and remaining compatibility work.
• Rust audit: safety fixes and measured performance, with methodology and limits.

Provenance and license

Forked from astral-tl and extended for bounded no_std parsing and RustedBytes consumers. Licensed under MIT; see LICENSE.