HTML parsers are software for automated Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) parsing. They have two main purposes: HTML traversal: offer an interface for programmers to easily access and modify the "HTML string code". Canonical example: DOM parsers. HTML clean: to fix invalid HTML and to improve the layout and indent style of the resulting markup. Canonical example: HTML Tidy.
Parser License Implementation language(s) Latest date* HTML parsing HTML5-compliant parsing Clean HTML** Update HTML*** HTML Tidy W3C license ANSI C 2021-07-17 HtmlUnit Apache License 2.0 Java 2023-10-31 Beautiful Soup MIT License Python 2023-04-07 jsoup MIT License Java 2026-08-26 Parser License Implementation language(s) Latest date* HTML Parsing HTML5-compliant Parsing Clean HTML** Update HTML*** * Latest release (of significant changes) date. ** sanitize (generating standard-compatible web-page, reduce spam, etc.) and clean (strip out surplus presentational tags, remove XSS code, etc.) HTML code. *** Updates HTML4.X to XHTML or to HTML5, converting deprecated tags (ex. CENTER) to valid ones (ex. DIV with style="text-align:center;").
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