How to get the raw HTML of a node

Question

I am using Nokogiri to analyze some HTML, but, I don't know how get the raw HTML inside a node.

For example, given:

<tr class="tableX">
  <td align="center">
    <font size="2"><a href="javascript:open('9746')">9746</a></font>
  </td>
  <td align="center">
    <font size="2">2012-06-26</font>
  </td>
</tr>

When I use this XPath selector:

doc = Nokogiri::HTML(html)

nodes = doc.search("//tr[@class='tablebX']")

nodes.each do |node|
   node.text # or node.content
end

The results from node.text and node.content are:

9746
2012-06-26

I want to get all raw HTML inside the tr block, which, in this case, is:

<td align="center">
  <font size="2"><a href="javascript:open('9746')">9746</a></font>
</td>
<td align="center">
  <font size="2">2012-06-26</font>
</td>

What's the proper way to do that?

Mclellan

Node's to_html will give you the original HTML. – Xuanxunit

Answer 1

Use node.to_s, or just node:

nodes = doc.search("//tr[@class='tablebX']")
nodes.each do |node|
   puts node.to_s
   puts '-'*40
end

With additional sanity-check HTML (yours, doubled, with a tr of a different class in the middle) I get:

<tr class="tableX">
<td align="center">
<font size="2"><a href="javascript:open('9746')">9746</a></font> 
            </td>
            <td align="center"><font size="2">2012-06-26</font></td>
</tr>
----------------------------------------
<tr class="tableX">
<td align="center">
<font size="2"><a href="javascript:open('9746')">9746</a></font> 
            </td>
            <td align="center"><font size="2">2012-06-26</font></td>
</tr>
----------------------------------------

Underbred

Answer 2

You can add children.to_html. Try to do that below:

doc = Nokogiri::HTML(html)

nodes = doc.search("//tr[@class='tablebX']")

nodes.each do |node|
   node.children.to_html # or node.content
end

Lithometeor

Answer 3

The correct method is .children. It returns all the html inside the selected element.

So having this code:

<tr class="container">
  <td>value</td>
</tr>

And using this process:

data = Nokogiri::HTML(html)
data.css("tr.container").children

Will return this html:

<td>value</td>

I guess my answer is too late but that's the exact codes you need.

Gobetween

Children doesn't return raw HTML, it only returns the NodeSet containing the children of the parent node. The OP wants the raw HTML. Node#to_html or its aliases do that. – Xuanxunit