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Comparison of HTML parsers
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<p>HTML parsers are software for automated <a href="/facts/Hypertext_Markup_Language/sSc3fT78">Hypertext Markup Language</a> (HTML) <a href="/facts/Parsing/nRKB01S3">parsing</a>. They have two main purposes: </p> <ul><li>HTML traversal: offer an interface for programmers to easily access and modify the "HTML string code". Canonical example: <a href="/facts/Document_Object_Model/GglE6jGx">DOM parsers</a>.</li> <li>HTML clean: to fix invalid HTML and to improve the layout and indent style of the resulting markup. Canonical example: <a href="/facts/HTML_Tidy/Dv1B4DCW">HTML Tidy</a>.</li></ul> <table><tbody><tr><th>Parser</th><th><a href="/facts/Software_license/7enfIqhL">License</a></th><th>Implementation language(s)</th><th>Latest date*</th><th>HTML parsing</th><th>HTML5-compliant parsing</th><th>Clean HTML**</th><th>Update HTML***</th></tr><tr><td><a href="/facts/HTML_Tidy/Dv1B4DCW">HTML Tidy</a></td><td><a href="/facts/W3C_license/2a7ST5om">W3C license</a></td><td><a href="/facts/ANSI_C/rPKeEuPm">ANSI C</a></td><td>2021-07-17</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td><a href="/facts/HtmlUnit/sf9kHVLK">HtmlUnit</a></td><td><a href="/facts/Apache_License/5AeIjas8">Apache License</a> 2.0</td><td><a href="/facts/Java_(programming_language)/9ScgFyAL">Java</a></td><td>2023-10-31</td><td>Yes</td><td>?</td><td>No</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td><a href="/facts/Beautiful_Soup_(HTML_parser)/uctLqxAN">Beautiful Soup</a></td><td><a href="/facts/MIT_License/8llAQtlk">MIT License</a></td><td><a href="/facts/Python_(programming_language)/YbuGqofa">Python</a></td><td>2023-04-07</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td><td>?</td><td>No</td></tr><tr><td><a href="/facts/Jsoup/4cqaWGLA">jsoup</a></td><td><a href="/facts/MIT_License/8llAQtlk">MIT License</a></td><td><a href="/facts/Java_(programming_language)/9ScgFyAL">Java</a></td><td>2025-04-29</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><th>Parser</th><th><a href="/facts/Software_license/7enfIqhL">License</a></th><th>Implementation language(s)</th><th>Latest date*</th><th>HTML Parsing</th><th>HTML5-compliant Parsing</th><th>Clean HTML**</th><th>Update HTML***</th></tr></tbody></table> * Latest release (of significant changes) date. ** <i>sanitize</i> (generating standard-compatible web-page, reduce spam, etc.) and <i>clean</i> (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;").