NAME

HTML::Parse - Deprecated, a wrapper around HTML::TreeBuilder

SYNOPSIS

See the documentation for HTML::TreeBuilder

DESCRIPTION

Disclaimer: This module is provided only for backwards compatibility with earlier versions of this library. New code should not use this module, and should really use the HTML::Parser and HTML::TreeBuilder modules directly, instead.

The HTML::Parse module provides functions to parse HTML documents. There are two functions exported by this module:

parse_html($html) or parse_html($html, $obj)

This function is really just a synonym for $obj->parse($html) and $obj is assumed to be a subclass of HTML::Parser. Refer to HTML::Parser for more documentation.

If $obj is not specified, the $obj will default to an internally created new HTML::TreeBuilder object configured with strict_comment() turned on. That class implements a parser that builds (and is) a HTML syntax tree with HTML::Element objects as nodes.

The return value from parse_html() is $obj.

parse_htmlfile($file, [$obj])

Same as parse_html(), but pulls the HTML to parse, from the named file.

Returns undef if the file could not be opened, or $obj otherwise.

When a HTML::TreeBuilder object is created, the following variables control how parsing takes place:

$HTML::Parse::IMPLICIT_TAGS

Setting this variable to true will instruct the parser to try to deduce implicit elements and implicit end tags. If this variable is false you get a parse tree that just reflects the text as it stands. Might be useful for quick & dirty parsing. Default is true.

Implicit elements have the implicit() attribute set.

$HTML::Parse::IGNORE_UNKNOWN

This variable contols whether unknow tags should be represented as elements in the parse tree. Default is true.

$HTML::Parse::IGNORE_TEXT

Do not represent the text content of elements. This saves space if all you want is to examine the structure of the document. Default is false.

$HTML::Parse::WARN

Call warn() with an apropriate message for syntax errors. Default is false.

REMEMBER!

HTML::TreeBuilder objects should be explicitly destroyed when you're finished with them. See HTML::TreeBuilder.

SEE ALSO

HTML::Parser, HTML::TreeBuilder, HTML::Element

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 1995-1998 Gisle Aas. All rights reserved.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

AUTHOR

Gisle Aas <gisle@aas.no>. Current maintainer Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>