NAME

HTML::AsText::Fix - extends HTML::Element::as_text() to render text properly

VERSION

version 0.002

SYNOPSIS

    # fix individual objects
    my $tree = HTML::TreeBuilder::XPath->new_from_content($html);
    my $guard = HTML::AsText::Fix::object($tree);

    # fix deeply nested objects
    use URI;
    use Web::Scraper;

    # First, create your scraper block
    my $tweets = scraper {
        process "li.status", "tweets[]" => scraper {
            process ".entry-content", body => 'TEXT';
            process ".entry-date", when => 'TEXT';
            process 'a[rel="bookmark"]', link => '@href';
        };
    };

    my $res;
    {
        my $guard = HTML::AsText::Fix::global();
        $res = $tweets->scrape( URI->new("http://twitter.com/creaktive") );
    }

DESCRIPTION

Consider the following HTML sample:

    <p>
        <span>AAA</span>
        BBB
    </p>
    <h2>CCC</h2>
    DDD
    <br>
    EEE

HTML::Element::as_text() method stringifies it as AAABBBCCCDDDEEE. Despite being correct, this is far from the actual renderization within a "real" browser. links(1), lynx(1) & w3m(1) break lines this way:

    AAABBB
    CCC
    DDD
    EEE

This module tries to implement the same behavior in the method "as_text" in HTML::Element. By default, $/ value is inserted in place of line breaks, and "\x{200b}" (Unicode zero-width space) separates text from adjacent inline elements.

Distinction between block/inline nodes

"span", for instance, is an inline node:

    <p><span>A</span>pple</p>

In that case, there really shouldn't be a space between "A" and "pple". To handle inline nodes properly, only block nodes are separated by line break. Following nodes are currently assumed being blocks:

• p
• h1 h2 h3 h4 h5 h6
• dl dt dd
• ol ul li
• dir
• address
• blockquote
• center
• del
• div
• hr
• ins
• noscript script
• pre
• br (just to make sense)

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_element#Block_elements)

FUNCTIONS

as_text

The replacement function. Not to be used separately. It is injected inside HTML::Element.

global

Hook into every HTML::Element within the lexical scope. Returns the guard object, destroying it will unhook safely.

Accepts following options:

• lf_char: character inserted between block nodes (by default, $/);
• zwsp_char: character inserted between inline nodes (by default, "\x{200b}", Unicode zero-width space);
• trim: trim heading/trailing spaces (considers "\x{A0}" as space!);
• extra_chars: extra characters to trim;
• skip_dels: if true, then text content under "del" nodes is not included in what's returned.

For example, to completely get rid of separation between inline nodes:

    my $guard = HTML::AsText::Fix::global(zwsp_char => '');

object

Hook object instance. Accepts the same options as "global":

    my $guard = HTML::AsText::Fix::object($tree, zwsp_char => '');

SEE ALSO

• HTML::Element
• HTML::Tree
• HTML::FormatText
• Monkey::Patch

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

• Αριστοτέλης Παγκαλτζής
• Toby Inkster

AUTHOR

Stanislaw Pusep <stas@sysd.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2012 by Stanislaw Pusep.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.