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HTML::Parser - HTML parser class

use strict;use warnings;use HTML::Parser ();# Create parser objectmy$p = HTML::Parser->new(api_version=> 3,start_h=> [\&start,"tagname, attr"],end_h=> [\&end,"tagname"],marked_sections=> 1,);# Parse document text chunk by chunk$p->parse($chunk1);$p->parse($chunk2);# ...# signal end of document$p->eof;# Parse directly from file$p->parse_file("foo.html");# oropen(my$fh,"<:utf8","foo.html") ||die;$p->parse_file($fh);

Objects of theHTML::Parser class will recognize markup andseparate it from plain text (alias data content) in HTMLdocuments. As different kinds of markup and text are recognized, thecorresponding event handlers are invoked.

HTML::Parser is not a generic SGML parser. We have tried tomake it able to deal with the HTML that is actually "out there", andit normally parses as closely as possible to the way the popular webbrowsers do it instead of strictly following one of the many HTMLspecifications from W3C. Where there is disagreement, there is oftenan option that you can enable to get the official behaviour.

The document to be parsed may be supplied in arbitrary chunks. Thismakes on-the-fly parsing as documents are received from the networkpossible.

If event driven parsing does not feel right for your application, youmight want to useHTML::PullParser. This is anHTML::Parsersubclass that allows a more conventional program structure.

The following method is used to construct a newHTML::Parser object:

• $p = HTML::Parser->new( %options_and_handlers )

  This class method creates a newHTML::Parser object andreturns it. Key/value argument pairs may be provided to assign eventhandlers or initialize parser options. The handlers and parseroptions can also be set or modified later by the method calls described below.

  If a top level key is in the form "<event>_h" (e.g., "text_h") then itassigns a handler to that event, otherwise it initializes a parseroption. The event handler specification value must be an arrayreference. Multiple handlers may also be assigned with the 'handlers=> [%handlers]' option. See examples below.

  If new() is called without any arguments, it will create a parser thatuses callback methods compatible with version 2 ofHTML::Parser.See the section on "version 2 compatibility" below for details.

  The special constructor option 'api_version => 2' can be used toinitialize version 2 callbacks while still setting other options andhandlers. The 'api_version => 3' option can be used if you don't wantto set any options and don't want to fall back to v2 compatiblemode.

  Examples:

  $p = HTML::Parser->new(api_version=> 3,text_h=> [sub {...},"dtext" ]);

  This creates a new parser object with a text event handler subroutinethat receives the original text with general entities decoded.

  $p = HTML::Parser->new(api_version=> 3,start_h=> ['my_start',"self,tokens" ]);

  This creates a new parser object with a start event handler methodthat receives the $p and the tokens array.

  $p = HTML::Parser->new(api_version=> 3,handlers=> {text=> [\@array,"event,text"],comment=> [\@array,"event,text"],  });

  This creates a new parser object that stores the event type and theoriginal text in @array for text and comment events.

The following methods feed the HTML documentto theHTML::Parser object:

• $p->parse( $string )

  Parse $string as the next chunk of the HTML document. Handlers invoked shouldnot attempt to modify the $string in-place until $p->parse returns.

  If an invoked event handler aborts parsing by calling $p->eof, then $p->parse()will return a FALSE value. Otherwise the return value is a reference to theparser object ($p).

• $p->parse( $code_ref )

  If a code reference is passed as the argument to be parsed, then thechunks to be parsed are obtained by invoking this function repeatedly.Parsing continues until the function returns an empty (or undefined)result. When this happens $p->eof is automatically signaled.

  Parsing will also abort if one of the event handlers calls $p->eof.

  The effect of this is the same as:

  while (1) {my$chunk = &$code_ref();if (!defined($chunk) || !length($chunk)) {$p->eof;return$p;    }$p->parse($chunk) ||returnundef;}

  But it is more efficient as this loop runs internally in XS code.

• $p->parse_file( $file )

  Parse text directly from a file. The $file argument can be afilename, an open file handle, or a reference to an open filehandle.

  If$file contains a filename and the file can't be opened, then themethod returns an undefined value and $! tells why it failed.Otherwise the return value is a reference to the parser object.

  If a file handle is passed as the $file argument, then the file willnormally be read until EOF, but not closed.

  If an invoked event handler aborts parsing by calling $p->eof,then $p->parse_file() may not have read the entire file.

  On systems with multi-byte line terminators, the values passed for theoffset and length argspecs may be too low if parse_file() is called ona file handle that is not in binary mode.

  If a filename is passed in, then parse_file() will open the file inbinary mode.

• $p->eof

  Signals the end of the HTML document. Calling the $p->eof methodoutside a handler callback will flush any remaining buffered text(which triggers thetext event if there is any remaining text).

  Calling $p->eof inside a handler will terminate parsing at that pointand cause $p->parse to return a FALSE value. This also terminatesparsing by $p->parse_file().

  After $p->eof has been called, the parse() and parse_file() methodscan be invoked to feed new documents with the parser object.

  The return value from eof() is a reference to the parser object.

Most parser options are controlled by boolean attributes.Each boolean attribute is enabled by calling the corresponding methodwith a TRUE argument and disabled with a FALSE argument. Theattribute value is left unchanged if no argument is given. The returnvalue from each method is the old attribute value.

Methods that can be used to get and/or set parser options are:

• $p->attr_encoded

• $p->attr_encoded( $bool )

  By default, theattr and@attr argspecs will have generalentities for attribute values decoded. Enabling this attribute leavesentities alone.

• $p->backquote

• $p->backquote( $bool )

  By default, only ' and " are recognized as quote characters aroundattribute values. MSIE also recognizes backquotes for some reason.Enabling this attribute provides compatibility with this behaviour.

• $p->boolean_attribute_value( $val )

  This method sets the value reported for boolean attributes inside HTMLstart tags. By default, the name of the attribute is also used as itsvalue. This affects the values reported fortokens andattrargspecs.

• $p->case_sensitive

• $p->case_sensitive( $bool )

  By default, tag names and attribute names are down-cased. Enabling thisattribute leaves them as found in the HTML source document.

• $p->closing_plaintext

• $p->closing_plaintext( $bool )

  By default,plaintext element can never be closed. Everything up tothe end of the document is parsed in CDATA mode. This historicalbehaviour is what at least MSIE does. Enabling this attribute makesclosing </plaintext > tag effective and the parsing process will resumeafter seeing this tag. This emulates early gecko-based browsers.

• $p->empty_element_tags

• $p->empty_element_tags( $bool )

  By default, empty element tags are not recognized as such and the "/"before ">" is just treated like a normal name character (unlessstrict_names is enabled). Enabling this attribute makeHTML::Parser recognize these tags.

  Empty element tags look like start tags, but end with the charactersequence "/>" instead of ">". When recognized byHTML::Parser theycause an artificial end event in addition to the start event. Thetext for the artificial end event will be empty and thetokenposarray will be undefined even though the token array will have oneelement containing the tag name.

• $p->marked_sections

• $p->marked_sections( $bool )

  By default, section markings like <![CDATA[...]]> are treated likeordinary text. When this attribute is enabled section markings arehonoured.

  There are currently no events associated with the marked sectionmarkup, but the text can be returned asskipped_text.

• $p->strict_comment

• $p->strict_comment( $bool )

  By default, comments are terminated by the first occurrence of "-->".This is the behaviour of most popular browsers (like Mozilla, Opera andMSIE), but it is not correct according to the official HTMLstandard. Officially, you need an even number of "--" tokens beforethe closing ">" is recognized and there may not be anything butwhitespace between an even and an odd "--".

  The official behaviour is enabled by enabling this attribute.

  Enabling of 'strict_comment' also disables recognizing these forms ascomments:

  </ comment><! comment>

• $p->strict_end

• $p->strict_end( $bool )

  By default, attributes and other junk are allowed to be present on end tags in amanner that emulates MSIE's behaviour.

  The official behaviour is enabled with this attribute. If enabled,only whitespace is allowed between the tagname and the final ">".

• $p->strict_names

• $p->strict_names( $bool )

  By default, almost anything is allowed in tag and attribute names.This is the behaviour of most popular browsers and allows us to parsesome broken tags with invalid attribute values like:

  <IMG SRC=newprevlstGr.gif ALT=[PREV LIST] BORDER=0>

  By default, "LIST]" is parsed as a boolean attribute, not aspart of the ALT value as was clearly intended. This is also whatMozilla sees.

  The official behaviour is enabled by enabling this attribute. Ifenabled, it will cause the tag above to be reported as textsince "LIST]" is not a legal attribute name.

• $p->unbroken_text

• $p->unbroken_text( $bool )

  By default, blocks of text are given to the text handler as soon aspossible (but the parser takes care always to break text at aboundary between whitespace and non-whitespace so single words andentities can always be decoded safely). This might create breaks thatmake it hard to do transformations on the text. When this attribute isenabled, blocks of text are always reported in one piece. This willdelay the text event until the following (non-text) event has beenrecognized by the parser.

  Note that theoffset argspec will give you the offset of the firstsegment of text andlength is the combined length of the segments.Since there might be ignored tags in between, these numbers can't beused to directly index in the original document file.

• $p->utf8_mode

• $p->utf8_mode( $bool )

  Enable this option when parsing raw undecoded UTF-8. This tells theparser that the entities expanded for strings reported byattr,@attr anddtext should be expanded as decoded UTF-8 so they endup compatible with the surrounding text.

  Ifutf8_mode is enabled then it is an error to pass stringscontaining characters with code above 255 to the parse() method, andthe parse() method will croak if you try.

  Example: The Unicode character "\x{2665}" is "\xE2\x99\xA5" when UTF-8encoded. The character can also be represented by the entity"&hearts;" or "&#x2665". If we feed the parser:

  $p->parse("\xE2\x99\xA5♥");

  thendtext will be reported as "\xE2\x99\xA5\x{2665}" withoututf8_mode enabled, but as "\xE2\x99\xA5\xE2\x99\xA5" when enabled.The later string is what you want.

• $p->xml_mode

• $p->xml_mode( $bool )

  Enabling this attribute changes the parser to allow some XMLconstructs. This enables the behaviour controlled by individually bythecase_sensitive,empty_element_tags,strict_names andxml_pic attributes and also suppresses special treatment ofelements that are parsed as CDATA for HTML.

• $p->xml_pic

• $p->xml_pic( $bool )

  By default,processing instructions are terminated by ">". Whenthis attribute is enabled, processing instructions are terminated by"?>" instead.

As markup and text is recognized, handlers are invoked. The followingmethod is used to set up handlers for different events:

• $p->handler( event => \&subroutine, $argspec )

• $p->handler( event => $method_name, $argspec )

• $p->handler( event => \@accum, $argspec )

• $p->handler( event => "" );

• $p->handler( event => undef );

• $p->handler( event );

  This method assigns a subroutine, method, or array to handle an event.

  Event is one oftext,start,end,declaration,comment,process,start_document,end_document ordefault.

  The\&subroutine is a reference to a subroutine which is called to handlethe event.

  The$method_name is the name of a method of $p which is called to handlethe event.

  The@accum is an array that will hold the event information assub-arrays.

  If the second argument is "", the event is ignored.If it is undef, the default handler is invoked for the event.

  The$argspec is a string that describes the information to be reportedfor the event. Any requested information that does not apply to aspecific event is passed asundef. If argspec is omitted, then itis left unchanged.

  The return value from $p->handler is the old callback routine or areference to the accumulator array.

  Any return values from handler callback routines/methods are alwaysignored. A handler callback can request parsing to be aborted byinvoking the $p->eof method. A handler callback is not allowed toinvoke the $p->parse() or $p->parse_file() method. An exception willbe raised if it tries.

  Examples:

  $p->handler(start=>"start",'self, attr, attrseq, text' );

  This causes the "start" method of object$p to be called for 'start' events.The callback signature is$p->start(\%attr, \@attr_seq, $text).

  $p->handler(start=>  \&start,'attr, attrseq, text' );

  This causes subroutine start() to be called for 'start' events.The callback signature is start(\%attr, \@attr_seq, $text).

  $p->handler(start=>  \@accum,'"S", attr, attrseq, text' );

  This causes 'start' event information to be saved in @accum.The array elements will be ['S', \%attr, \@attr_seq, $text].

  $p->handler(start=>"");

  This causes 'start' events to be ignored. It also suppressesinvocations of any default handler for start events. It is in mostcases equivalent to $p->handler(start => sub {}), but is moreefficient. It is different from the empty-sub-handler in thatskipped_text is not reset by it.

  $p->handler(start=>undef);

  This causes no handler to be associated with start events.If there is a default handler it will be invoked.

Filters based on tags can be set up to limit the number of eventsreported. The main bottleneck during parsing is often the huge numberof callbacks made from the parser. Applying filters can improveperformance significantly.

The following methods control filters:

• $p->ignore_elements( @tags )

  Both thestart event and theend event as well as any events thatwould be reported in between are suppressed. The ignored elements cancontain nested occurrences of itself. Example:

  $p->ignore_elements(qw(script style));

  Thescript andstyle tags will always nest properly since theircontent is parsed in CDATA mode. For most other tagsignore_elements must be used with caution since HTML is often notwell formed.

• $p->ignore_tags( @tags )

  Anystart andend events involving any of the tags given aresuppressed. To reset the filter (i.e. don't suppress anystart andend events), callignore_tags without an argument.

• $p->report_tags( @tags )

  Anystart andend events involving any of the tagsnot givenare suppressed. To reset the filter (i.e. report allstart andend events), callreport_tags without an argument.

Internally, the system has two filter lists, one forreport_tagsand one forignore_tags, and both filters are applied. Thiseffectively givesignore_tags precedence overreport_tags.

Examples:

$p->ignore_tags(qw(style));$p->report_tags(qw(script style));

results in onlyscript events being reported.

Argspec is a string containing a comma-separated list that describesthe information reported by the event. The following argspecidentifier names can be used:

• attr

  Attr causes a reference to a hash of attribute name/value pairs to bepassed.

  Boolean attributes' values are either the value set by$p->boolean_attribute_value, or the attribute name if no value has beenset by $p->boolean_attribute_value.

  This passes undef except forstart events.

  Unlessxml_mode orcase_sensitive is enabled, the attributenames are forced to lower case.

  General entities are decoded in the attribute values andone layer of matching quotes enclosing the attribute values is removed.

  The Unicode character set is assumed for entity decoding.

• @attr

  Basically the same asattr, but keys and values are passed asindividual arguments and the original sequence of the attributes iskept. The parameters passed will be the same as the @attr calculatedhere:

  @attr =map {$_=>$attr->{$_} }@$attrseq;

  assuming $attr and $attrseq here are the hash and array passed as theresult ofattr andattrseq argspecs.

  This passes no values for events besidesstart.

• attrseq

  Attrseq causes a reference to an array of attribute names to bepassed. This can be useful if you want to walk theattr hash inthe original sequence.

  This passes undef except forstart events.

  Unlessxml_mode orcase_sensitive is enabled, the attributenames are forced to lower case.

• column

  Column causes the column number of the start of the event to be passed.The first column on a line is 0.

• dtext

  Dtext causes the decoded text to be passed. General entities areautomatically decoded unless the event was inside a CDATA section orwas between literal start and end tags (script,style,xmp,iframe,title,textarea andplaintext).

  The Unicode character set is assumed for entity decoding.

  This passes undef except fortext events.

• event

  Event causes the event name to be passed.

  The event name is one oftext,start,end,declaration,comment,process,start_document orend_document.

• is_cdata

  Is_cdata causes a TRUE value to be passed if the event is inside a CDATAsection or between literal start and end tags (script,style,xmp,iframe,title,textarea andplaintext).

  if the flag is FALSE for a text event, then you should normallyeither usedtext or decode the entities yourself before the text isprocessed further.

• length

  Length causes the number of bytes of the source text of the event tobe passed.

• line

  Line causes the line number of the start of the event to be passed.The first line in the document is 1. Line counting doesn't startuntil at least one handler requests this value to be reported.

• offset

  Offset causes the byte position in the HTML document of the start ofthe event to be passed. The first byte in the document has offset 0.

• offset_end

  Offset_end causes the byte position in the HTML document of the end ofthe event to be passed. This is the same asoffset +length.

• self

  Self causes the current object to be passed to the handler. If thehandler is a method, this must be the first element in the argspec.

  An alternative to passing self as an argspec is to register closuresthat capture $self by themselves as handlers. Unfortunately thiscreates circular references which prevent the HTML::Parser objectfrom being garbage collected. Using theself argspec avoids thisproblem.

• skipped_text

  Skipped_text returns the concatenated text of all the events that havebeen skipped since the last time an event was reported. Events mightbe skipped because no handler is registered for them or because somefilter applies. Skipped text also includes marked section markup,since there are no events that can catch it.

  If an""-handler is registered for an event, then the text for thisevent is not included inskipped_text. Skipped text both beforeand after the""-event is included in the next reportedskipped_text.

• tag

  Same astagname, but prefixed with "/" if it belongs to anendevent and "!" for a declaration. Thetag does not have any prefixforstart events, and is in this case identical totagname.

• tagname

  This is the element name (orgeneric identifier in SGML jargon) forstart and end tags. Since HTML is case insensitive, this name isforced to lower case to ease string matching.

  Since XML is case sensitive, the tagname case is not changed whenxml_mode is enabled. The same happens if thecase_sensitive attributeis set.

  The declaration type of declaration elements is also passed as a tagname,even if that is a bit strange.In fact, in the current implementation tagname isidentical totoken0 except that the name may be forced to lower case.

• token0

  Token0 causes the original text of the first token string to bepassed. This should always be the same as $tokens->[0].

  Fordeclaration events, this is the declaration type.

  Forstart andend events, this is the tag name.

  Forprocess and non-strictcomment events, this is everythinginside the tag.

  This passes undef if there are no tokens in the event.

• tokenpos

  Tokenpos causes a reference to an array of token positions to bepassed. For each string that appears intokens, this arraycontains two numbers. The first number is the offset of the start ofthe token in the originaltext and the second number is the lengthof the token.

  Boolean attributes in astart event will have (0,0) for theattribute value offset and length.

  This passes undef if there are no tokens in the event (e.g.,text)and for artificialend events triggered by empty element tags.

  If you are using these offsets and lengths to modifytext, youshould either work from right to left, or be very careful to calculatethe changes to the offsets.

• tokens

  Tokens causes a reference to an array of token strings to be passed.The strings are exactly as they were found in the original text,no decoding or case changes are applied.

  Fordeclaration events, the array contains each word, comment, anddelimited string starting with the declaration type.

  Forcomment events, this contains each sub-comment. If$p->strict_comments is disabled, there will be only one sub-comment.

  Forstart events, this contains the original tag name followed bythe attribute name/value pairs. The values of boolean attributes willbe either the value set by $p->boolean_attribute_value, or theattribute name if no value has been set by$p->boolean_attribute_value.

  Forend events, this contains the original tag name (always one token).

  Forprocess events, this contains the process instructions (always onetoken).

  This passesundef fortext events.

• text

  Text causes the source text (including markup element delimiters) to bepassed.

• undef

  Pass an undefined value. Useful as padding where the same handlerroutine is registered for multiple events.

• '...'

  A literal string of 0 to 255 characters enclosedin single (') or double (") quotes is passed as entered.

The whole argspec string can be wrapped up in'@{...}' to signalthat the resulting event array should be flattened. This only makes adifference if an array reference is used as the handler target.Consider this example:

$p->handler(text=> [],'text');$p->handler(text=> [],'@{text}']);

With two text events;"foo","bar"; then the first example will endup with [["foo"], ["bar"]] and the second with ["foo", "bar"] inthe handler target array.

Handlers for the following events can be registered:

• comment

  This event is triggered when a markup comment is recognized.

  Example:

  <!-- This is a comment -- -- So is this -->

• declaration

  This event is triggered when amarkup declaration is recognized.

  For typical HTML documents, the only declaration you arelikely to find is <!DOCTYPE ...>.

  Example:

  <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

  DTDs inside <!DOCTYPE ...> will confuse HTML::Parser.

• default

  This event is triggered for events that do not have a specifichandler. You can set up a handler for this event to catch stuff youdid not want to catch explicitly.

• end

  This event is triggered when an end tag is recognized.

  Example:

  </A>

• end_document

  This event is triggered when $p->eof is called and after any remainingtext is flushed. There is no document text associated with this event.

• process

  This event is triggered when a processing instructions markup isrecognized.

  The format and content of processing instructions are system andapplication dependent.

  Examples:

  <? HTML processing instructions ><? XML processing instructions ?>

• start

  This event is triggered when a start tag is recognized.

  Example:

  <A HREF="http://www.perl.com/">

• start_document

  This event is triggered before any other events for a new document. Ahandler for it can be used to initialize stuff. There is no documenttext associated with this event.

• text

  This event is triggered when plain text (characters) is recognized.The text may contain multiple lines. A sequence of text may be brokenbetween several text events unless $p->unbroken_text is enabled.

  The parser will make sure that it does not break a word or a sequenceof whitespace between two text events.

If Unicode is passed to $p->parse() then chunksof Unicode will be reported to the handlers. The offset and lengthargspecs will also report their position in terms of characters.

It is safe to parse raw undecoded UTF-8 if you either avoid decodingentities and make sure to not useargspecs that do, or enable theutf8_mode for the parser. Parsing of undecoded UTF-8 might beuseful when parsing from a file where you need the reported offsetsand lengths to match the byte offsets in the file.

If a filename is passed to $p->parse_file() then the file will be readin binary mode. This will be fine if the file contains only ASCII orLatin-1 characters. If the file contains UTF-8 encoded text then caremust be taken when decoding entities as described in the previousparagraph, but better is to open the file with the UTF-8 layer so thatit is decoded properly:

open(my$fh,"<:utf8","index.html") ||die"...:$!";$p->parse_file($fh);

If the file contains text encoded in a charset besides ASCII, Latin-1or UTF-8 then decoding will always be needed.

When anHTML::Parser object is constructed with no arguments, a setof handlers is automatically provided that is compatible with the oldHTML::Parser version 2 callback methods.

This is equivalent to the following method calls:

$p->handler(start=>"start","self, tagname, attr, attrseq, text");$p->handler(end=>"end","self, tagname, text");$p->handler(text=>"text","self, text, is_cdata");$p->handler(process=>"process","self, token0, text");$p->handler(comment=>sub {my ($self,$tokens) =@_;for (@$tokens) {$self->comment($_); }    },"self, tokens");$p->handler(declaration=>sub {my$self =shift;$self->declaration(substr($_[0], 2, -1));    },"self, text");

Setting up these handlers can also be requested with the "api_version =>2" constructor option.

TheHTML::Parser class is able to be subclassed. Parser objects are plainhashes andHTML::Parser reserves only hash keys that start with"_hparser". The parser state can be set up by invoking the init()method, which takes the same arguments as new().

The first simple example shows how you might strip out comments froman HTML document. We achieve this by setting up a comment handler thatdoes nothing and a default handler that will print out anything else:

use HTML::Parser ();HTML::Parser->new(default_h=> [sub {printshift },'text'],comment_h=> [""],)->parse_file(shift ||die)    ||die$!;

An alternative implementation is:

use HTML::Parser ();HTML::Parser->new(end_document_h=> [sub {printshift },'skipped_text'],comment_h=> [""],)->parse_file(shift ||die)    ||die$!;

This will in most cases be much more efficient since only a singlecallback will be made.

The next example prints out the text that is inside the <title>element of an HTML document. Here we start by setting up a starthandler. When it sees the title start tag it enables a text handlerthat prints any text found and an end handler that will terminateparsing as soon as the title end tag is seen:

use HTML::Parser ();substart_handler {returnifshiftne"title";my$self =shift;$self->handler(text=>sub {printshift },"dtext");$self->handler(end=>sub {shift->eofifshifteq"title";        },"tagname,self"    );}my$p = HTML::Parser->new(api_version=> 3);$p->handler(start=> \&start_handler,"tagname,self");$p->parse_file(shift ||die) ||die$!;print"\n";

More examples are found in theeg/ directory of theHTML-Parserdistribution: the programhrefsub shows how you can edit all linksfound in a document; the programhtextsub shows how to edit the text only; theprogramhstrip shows how you can strip out certain tags/elementsand/or attributes; and the programhtext show how to obtain theplain text, but not any script/style content.

You can browse theeg/ directory online from the[Browse] link onthehttp://search.cpan.org/~gaas/HTML-Parser/ page.

The <style> and <script> sections do not end with the first "</", butneed the complete corresponding end tag. The standard behaviour isnot really practical.

When thestrict_comment option is enabled, we still recognizecomments where there is something other than whitespace between evenand odd "--" markers.

Once $p->boolean_attribute_value has been set, there is no way torestore the default behaviour.

There is currently no way to get both quote charactersinto the same literal argspec.

Empty tags, e.g. "<>" and "</>", are not recognized. SGML allows themto repeat the previous start tag or close the previous start tagrespectively.

NET tags, e.g. "code/.../" are not recognized. This is SGMLshorthand for "<code>...</code>".

Incomplete start or end tags, e.g. "<tt<b>...</b</tt>" are notrecognized.

The following messages may be produced by HTML::Parser. The notationin this listing is the same as used inperldiag:

• Not a reference to a hash

  (F) The object blessed into or subclassed from HTML::Parser is not ahash as required by the HTML::Parser methods.

• Bad signature in parser state object at %p

  (F) The _hparser_xs_state element does not refer to a valid state structure.Something must have changed the internal valuestored in this hash element, or the memory has been overwritten.

• _hparser_xs_state element is not a reference

  (F) The _hparser_xs_state element has been destroyed.

• Can't find '_hparser_xs_state' element in HTML::Parser hash

  (F) The _hparser_xs_state element is missing from the parser hash.It was either deleted, or not created when the object was created.

• API version %s not supported by HTML::Parser %s

  (F) The constructor option 'api_version' with an argument greater thanor equal to 4 is reserved for future extensions.

• Bad constructor option '%s'

  (F) An unknown constructor option key was passed to the new() orinit() methods.

• Parse loop not allowed

  (F) A handler invoked the parse() or parse_file() method.This is not permitted.

• marked sections not supported

  (F) The $p->marked_sections() method was invoked in a HTML::Parsermodule that was compiled without support for marked sections.

• Unknown boolean attribute (%d)

  (F) Something is wrong with the internal logic that set up aliases forboolean attributes.

• Only code or array references allowed as handler

  (F) The second argument for $p->handler must be either a subroutinereference, then name of a subroutine or method, or a reference to anarray.

• No handler for %s events

  (F) The first argument to $p->handler must be a valid event name; i.e. oneof "start", "end", "text", "process", "declaration" or "comment".

• Unrecognized identifier %s in argspec

  (F) The identifier is not a known argspec name.Use one of the names mentioned in the argspec section above.

• Literal string is longer than 255 chars in argspec

  (F) The current implementation limits the length of literals inan argspec to 255 characters. Make the literal shorter.

• Backslash reserved for literal string in argspec

  (F) The backslash character "\" is not allowed in argspec literals.It is reserved to permit quoting inside a literal in a later version.

• Unterminated literal string in argspec

  (F) The terminating quote character for a literal was not found.

• Bad argspec (%s)

  (F) Only identifier names, literals, spaces and commasare allowed in argspecs.

• Missing comma separator in argspec

  (F) Identifiers in an argspec must be separated with ",".

• Parsing of undecoded UTF-8 will give garbage when decoding entities

  (W) The first chunk parsed appears to contain undecoded UTF-8 and oneor more argspecs that decode entities are used for the callbackhandlers.

  The result of decoding will be a mix of encoded and decoded charactersfor any entities that expand to characters with code above 127. Thisis not a good thing.

  The recommended solution is to apply Encode::decode_utf8() on the data beforefeeding it to the $p->parse(). For $p->parse_file() pass a file that has beenopened in ":utf8" mode.

  The alternative solution is to enable theutf8_mode and not decode beforepassing strings to $p->parse(). The parser can process raw undecoded UTF-8sanely if theutf8_mode is enabled, or if theattr,@attr ordtextargspecs are avoided.

• Parsing string decoded with wrong endian selection

  (W) The first character in the document is U+FFFE. This is not alegal Unicode character but a byte swappedBOM. The result of parsingwill likely be garbage.

• Parsing of undecoded UTF-32

  (W) The parser found the Unicode UTF-32BOM signature at the startof the document. The result of parsing will likely be garbage.

• Parsing of undecoded UTF-16

  (W) The parser found the Unicode UTF-16BOM signature at the start ofthe document. The result of parsing will likely be garbage.

HTML::Entities,HTML::PullParser,HTML::TokeParser,HTML::HeadParser,HTML::LinkExtor,HTML::Form

HTML::TreeBuilder (part of theHTML-Tree distribution)

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/

More information about marked sections and processing instructions maybe found athttp://www.is-thought.co.uk/book/sgml-8.htm.

Copyright 1996-2016 Gisle Aas. All rights reserved.Copyright 1999-2000 Michael A. Chase.  All rights reserved.

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