parseHtml

Parse HTML strings into a traversable virtual DOM.

Interface

this.parseHtml(htmlString)

Parameters

• htmlString - HTML string to parse

Returns

• VirtualNode tree structure

Description

The parseHtml service converts HTML strings into VirtualNode objects for traversal and manipulation. Useful for content processing, URL extraction, and HTML transformation.

VirtualNode API

node.type          // Element type ('div', '#text', '#comment', '#fragment')
node.attributes    // Object of element attributes
node.children      // Array of child VirtualNodes
node.text          // Concatenated text content of all descendants
node.traverse(fn)  // Recursively call fn on all nodes
node.toString()    // Serialize back to HTML

Examples

Basic Parsing

const node = this.parseHtml('<div class="container">Hello</div>');

node.children[0].type              // 'div'
node.children[0].attributes.class  // 'container'
node.text                          // 'Hello'

Extract Content

const html = await this.renderMarkdown(body);

this.parseHtml(html).traverse(node => {
    if (node.type === 'h1') {
        title = node.text;
    }
});

Find All Links

const links = [];
const virtualDom = this.parseHtml(htmlContent);

virtualDom.traverse(node => {
    if (node.type === 'a' && node.attributes.href) {
        links.push({
            href: node.attributes.href,
            text: node.text
        });
    }
});

Extract URLs

const urls = [];
const virtualDom = this.parseHtml(html);

virtualDom.traverse(({ attributes }) => {
    ['src', 'href'].forEach(name => {
        if (attributes[name]) {
            urls.push(attributes[name]);
        }
    });
});

Notes

• Handles self-closing tags (img, br, input)
• Preserves comments and doctypes
• HTML entity decoding for attributes and text
• Gracefully handles malformed HTML