# Parsing HTML into a tree

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/parsing-html-into-a-tree/92932>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [April 25, 2007, 8:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/parsing-html-into-a-tree/92932 "2007-04-25T20:21:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eliben](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/3bc359/32.png) [@eliben](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eliben)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2007, 8:21pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/parsing-html-into-a-tree/92932/1 "2007-04-25T20:21:08Z")

</div>

Hello,

I have a HTML document which I need to parse into a tree. I was  
looking for a suitable module to use, and came to two:

1. Hpricot, while it looks like a nice and fast HTML parser, it  
appears that its interface is completely unsuitable for parsing a HTML  
file into a tree. Is this possible and I’m missing something ?

2. htree - looks closer to what I need, but it documentation is very  
poor (almost inexistent). When I ‘pp’ a parsed HTree document I see a  
representation, but how can I actually traverse the tree ? At the  
moment I’m using reflection to “dissasemble” the htree tree structure.  
There must be a better way ! Can someone please provide an example of  
how to recursively print out the tree, telling for each node what kind  
of node it is ?

Are there other options ?

Thanks in advance  
Eli

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eliben](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/3bc359/32.png) [@eliben](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eliben)\
**Post date:** [April 25, 2007, 11:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/parsing-html-into-a-tree/92932/2 "2007-04-25T23:32:33Z")

</div>

Hi Eli,

I am not sure what you are trying to do

> Can someone please provide an example of  
> how to recursively print out the tree, telling for each node what kind  
> of node it is ?

gg.html (sample file)

```auto
<html>
<head>
   <title>Test Doc</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="main">
Main div Content
<div id="sub">
Sub div content
<span> Test span content</span>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

gg.rb
~~~~
require "htree"
tree = HTree.parse(STDIN)
tree.traverse_all_element do |e|
   puts e.name
   puts e.extract_text
end

Output
~~~~~~
imayam:~/work/temp/htree-0.6/test gg$ ruby gg.rb < gg.html
{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}html
           Test Doc
                         Main div Content
                                 Sub div content
                                  Test span content
{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}head
           Test Doc
{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}title
Test Doc
{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}body
                         Main div Content
                                 Sub div content
                                  Test span content
{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}div
                         Main div Content
                                 Sub div content
                                  Test span content
{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}div
                                 Sub div content
                                  Test span content
{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}span
Test span content

You can also traverse using 'traverse_some_element', 'each_child',
'traverse_text' etc. You can also convert Htree to rexml and traverse
it. Probably some context on what actually you are trying to achieve
might be helpful.

Cheers,
Ganesh G.
```