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Changelog

Source: NEWS.md

zuhtml 0.1.0

First release.

  • Bundles the ‘Gumbo’ HTML5 parser 0.14.0 from the maintained fork at https://codeberg.org/gumbo-parser/gumbo-parser, with local patches that add a parse-time nesting-depth limit, remove the library’s only printf(), and fix two memory-safety bugs in its <selectedcontent> support that fuzzing found (a use-after-free and a NULL dereference, both reachable from untrusted HTML) and an uninitialized read in fragment parsing. No system library is needed.

  • New html_parse() and html_read() parse HTML from a string, raw vector or local file under explicit resource limits from the new html_limits(). Nesting depth is bounded while parsing, and all parser memory goes through an allocation ledger with a budget, so a failed parse always releases everything. Raw input is decoded from a byte-order mark, an explicit encoding, the page’s <meta> declaration or UTF-8; invalid input is an error, never silently replaced.

  • Parsed documents are converted into a compact immutable tree that holds no reference to the parser or the input. All 1,686 applicable html5lib tree-construction tests that the bundled parser ships produce the expected tree.

  • New html_fragment() parses markup in the context of a given element, as innerHTML does.

  • Nodes are zuhtml_nodesets: vectors of nodes tied to their document, with missing nodes where an aligned operation has no answer. Navigate with html_children(), html_parent(), html_ancestors(), html_next_sibling(), html_previous_sibling(), html_root(), html_document() and html_template_content(); read values with html_name(), html_namespace(), html_type(), html_attr(), html_attrs(), html_classes() and html_text(). html_info() describes a document. lapply() and friends over a nodeset pass one node at a time; rep(), rev(), unique() and c() keep nodesets nodesets.

  • New extraction functions. html_text_clean() gives text as a reader wants it: scripts and styles skipped, whitespace collapsed outside <pre>, line breaks at <br> and block elements. html_list() reads a <ul>/<ol> as text or a tree, without nested items leaking into their parents. html_table() and html_tables() read tables into data frames of character columns, with row and column spans, rowspan="0", row groups, header detection and an error rather than a silent overwrite for overlapping cells. html_url() resolves URL attributes with RFC 3986 reference resolution, honouring <base href>, and html_links() lists a page’s links.

  • New html_elements(), html_element(), html_matches() and html_filter() select elements with a documented subset of CSS selectors: type, universal, ID, class and attribute selectors (with the i and s flags), the four combinators, selector lists, :scope, :root, :empty, :first-child, :last-child, :only-child, :nth-child(), :nth-of-type() and :not(). Anything else is a zuhtml_selector_error pointing at the offending position. html_element() keeps one result per input node, so extracted columns stay aligned.

  • New html_closest() finds each node’s nearest ancestor matching a selector, and html_strings() returns the text pieces html_text() joins, keeping element boundaries. html_serialize(pretty = TRUE) lays block-level elements out on indented lines for reading.

  • New html_title(), html_meta(), html_json_ld() and html_microdata() read page metadata: the document title, every <meta> tag (OpenGraph, Twitter cards and Dublin Core included), JSON-LD blocks (parsed with jsonlite if asked) and microdata items per the HTML standard, itemref included.

  • New html_table_cells() returns one row per table cell with its grid position, spans, section, whether it is a header, and its links. html_tables() gains match = to keep tables whose text matches a regular expression. html_table() gains convert =, decimal = and thousands = to convert columns that are entirely numbers or logicals, keeping identifiers with leading zeros as text.

  • New html_markdown() converts nodes to CommonMark: headings, paragraphs, emphasis, code, fenced code blocks, block quotes, nested lists, links and images with resolved URLs, and GFM pipe tables for data tables. Markdown-significant characters in text are escaped, and only emphasis that CommonMark parses back is written.

  • The <meta> declaration of raw input is found as browsers find it, by the HTML standard’s prescan of the first 1024 bytes, and read with the Encoding Standard’s labels (so iso-8859-1 means windows-1252). html_info() reports where the encoding came from in encoding_source.

  • New html_forms() describes each form and the controls it owns, by the HTML standard’s form-owner rules (form= references included), with DOM values for every control type and the options of each select. It only inspects: nothing is submitted.

  • html_read() reads a URL (through base R’s url(), which also sets the default base_url) or any connection, such as gzfile(), as well as a file path. Reading stops once the input passes four times max_input.

  • New html_serialize() (and as.character() on nodesets) writes nodes as normalized HTML following the WHATWG serialization algorithm, outer or inner.

  • New html_problems() lists the parse errors the parser repaired, with package-owned codes and positions.

  • Errors are classed conditions under zuhtml_error; see ?zuhtml-conditions.

  • New zuhtml_info() reports the bundled parser version and patches, and self-tests the compiled parser.