cheerio

What is cheerio?

Cheerio is a fast, flexible, and lean implementation of core jQuery designed specifically for the server. It allows users to manipulate and traverse HTML documents with a familiar jQuery-like API in a Node.js environment.

What are cheerio's main functionalities?

HTML Parsing

Cheerio can parse HTML and allows you to select and manipulate HTML elements in a way similar to jQuery.

const cheerio = require('cheerio');
const $ = cheerio.load('<h2 class="title">Hello world</h2>');
$('h2.title').text('Hello there!');
$('h2').addClass('welcome');
console.log($.html());

DOM Traversal

Cheerio provides methods to traverse the DOM tree, such as selecting elements by class, id, or tag name.

const cheerio = require('cheerio');
const $ = cheerio.load('<ul id="fruits"><li class="apple">Apple</li><li class="orange">Orange</li></ul>');
$('.apple', '#fruits').text();
$('ul .apple').attr('class');

DOM Manipulation

Cheerio allows you to manipulate the DOM by adding, removing, or modifying elements and their attributes.

const cheerio = require('cheerio');
const $ = cheerio.load('<ul id="fruits"></ul>');
$('#fruits').append('<li>Banana</li>');
$('#fruits').prepend('<li>Apple</li>');
$('#fruits').after('<p>Nothing to see here</p>');

Other packages similar to cheerio

jsdom

jsdom is a pure-JavaScript implementation of many web standards, notably the WHATWG DOM and HTML Standards. It is more heavyweight than cheerio as it aims to provide a complete browsing environment, but it is useful for more complex scenarios where a full DOM API is needed.

puppeteer

Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. It is different from cheerio as it allows for browser automation, including but not limited to DOM manipulation, and is capable of rendering and screenshotting web pages.

README

cheerio

Fast, flexible, and lean implementation of core jQuery designed specifically for the server.

Introduction

Teach your server HTML.

var cheerio = require('cheerio'),
    $ = cheerio.load('<h2 class = "title">Hello world</h2>');

$('h2.title').text('Hello there!');
$('h2').addClass('welcome');

$.html();
//=> <h2 class = "title welcome">Hello there!</h2>

Installation

npm install cheerio

... or to install the package globally:

npm install -g cheerio

Features

❤ Familiar syntax: Cheerio implements a subset of core jQuery. Cheerio removes all the DOM inconsistencies and browser cruft from the jQuery library, revealing its truly gorgeous API.

ϟ Blazingly fast: Cheerio works with a very simple, consistent DOM model. As a result parsing, manipulating, and rendering are incredibly efficient. Preliminary end-to-end benchmarks suggest that cheerio is about 8x faster than JSDOM.

❁ Insanely flexible: Cheerio wraps around @FB55's forgiving htmlparser. Cheerio can parse nearly any HTML or XML document.

What about JSDOM?

I wrote cheerio because I found myself increasingly frustrated with JSDOM. For me, there were three main sticking points that I kept running into again and again:

• JSDOM's built-in parser is too strict: JSDOM's bundled HTML parser cannot handle many popular sites out there today.

• JSDOM is too slow: Parsing big websites with JSDOM has a noticeable delay.

• JSDOM feels too heavy: The goal of JSDOM is to provide an identical DOM environment as what we see in the browser. I never really needed all this, I just wanted a simple, familiar way to do HTML manipulation.

When I would use JSDOM

Cheerio will not solve all your problems. I would still use JSDOM if I needed to work in a browser-like environment on the server, particularly if I wanted to automate functional tests.

API

Markup example we'll be using:

<ul id="fruits">
  <li class="apple">Apple</li>
  <li class="orange">Orange</li>
  <li class="pear">Pear</li>
</ul>

This is the HTML markup we will be using in all of the API examples.

Loading

First you need to load in the HTML. This step in jQuery is implicit, since jQuery operates on the one, baked-in DOM. With Cheerio, we need to pass in the HTML document.

This is the preferred method:

var cheerio = require('cheerio'),
    $ = cheerio.load('<ul id = "fruits">...</ul>');

Optionally, you can also load in the HTML by passing the string as the context:

$ = require('cheerio');
$('ul', '<ul id = "fruits">...</ul>');

Or as the root:

$ = require('cheerio');
$('li', 'ul', '<ul id = "fruits">...</ul>');

You can also pass an extra object to .load() if you need to modify any of the default parsing options:

$ = cheerio.load('<ul id = "fruits">...</ul>', {
    ignoreWhitespace: true,
    xmlMode: true
});

These parsing options are taken directly from htmlparser, therefore any options that can be used in htmlparser are valid in cheerio as well. The default options are:

{
    ignoreWhitespace: false,
    xmlMode: false,
    lowerCaseTags: false
}

For a list of options and their effects, see this and this.

Selectors

Cheerio's selector implementation is nearly identical to jQuery's, so the API is very similar.

$( selector, [context], [root] )

selector searches within the context scope which searches within the root scope. selector and context can be an string expression, DOM Element, array of DOM elements, or cheerio object. root is typically the HTML document string.

This selector method is the starting point for traversing and manipulating the document. Like jQuery, it's the primary method for selecting elements in the document, but unlike jQuery it's built on top of the CSSSelect library, which implements most of the Sizzle selectors.

$('.apple', '#fruits').text()
//=> Apple

$('ul .pear').attr('class')
//=> pear

$('li[class=orange]').html()
//=> <li class = "orange">Orange</li>

Attributes

Methods for getting and modifying attributes.

.attr( name, value )

Method for getting and setting attributes. Gets the attribute value for only the first element in the matched set. If you set an attribute's value to null, you remove that attribute. You may also pass a map and function like jQuery.

$('ul').attr('id')
//=> fruits

$('.apple').attr('id', 'favorite').html()
//=> <li class = "apple" id = "favorite">Apple</li>

See http://api.jquery.com/attr/ for more information

.removeAttr( name )

Method for removing attributes by name.

$('.pear').removeAttr('class').html()
//=> <li>Pear</li>

.hasClass( className )

Check to see if any of the matched elements have the given className.

$('.pear').hasClass('pear')
//=> true

$('apple').hasClass('fruit')
//=> false

$('li').hasClass('pear')
//=> true

.addClass( className )

Adds class(es) to all of the matched elements. Also accepts a function like jQuery.

$('.pear').addClass('fruit').html()
//=> <li class = "pear fruit">Pear</li>

$('.apple').addClass('fruit red').html()
//=> <li class = "apple fruit red">Apple</li>

See http://api.jquery.com/addClass/ for more information.

.removeClass( [className] )

Removes one or more space-separated classes from the selected elements. If no className is defined, all classes will be removed. Also accepts a function like jQuery.

$('.pear').removeClass('pear').html()
//=> <li class = "">Pear</li>

$('.apple').addClass('red').removeClass().html()
//=> <li class = "">Apple</li>

See http://api.jquery.com/removeClass/ for more information.

Traversing

.find(selector)

Get a set of descendants filtered by selector of each element in the current set of matched elements.

$('#fruits').find('li').size()
//=> 3

.parent()

Gets the parent of the first selected element.

$('.pear').parent().attr('id')
//=> fruits

.next()

Gets the next sibling of the first selected element.

$('.apple').next().hasClass('orange')
//=> true

.prev()

Gets the previous sibling of the first selected element.

$('.orange').prev().hasClass('apple')
//=> true

.siblings()

Gets the first selected element's siblings, excluding itself.

$('.pear').siblings().length
//=> 2

.children( selector )

Gets the children of the first selected element.

$('#fruits').children().length
//=> 3

$('#fruits').children('.pear').text()
//=> Pear

.each( function(index, element) )

Iterates over a cheerio object, executing a function for each matched element. When the callback is fired, the function is fired in the context of the DOM element, so this refers to the current element, which is equivalent to the function parameter element.

var fruits = [];

$('li').each(function(i, elem) {
  fruits[i] = $(this).text();
});

fruits.join(', ');
//=> Apple, Orange, Pear

.map( function(index, element) )

Iterates over a cheerio object, executing a function for each selected element. Map will return an array of return values from each of the functions it iterated over. The function is fired in the context of the DOM element, so this refers to the current element, which is equivalent to the function parameter element.

$('li').map(function(i, el) {
  // this === el
  return $(this).attr('class');
}).join(', ');
//=> apple, orange, pear

.first()

Will select the first element of a cheerio object

$('#fruits').children().first().text()
//=> Apple

.last()

Will select the last element of a cheerio object

$('#fruits').children().last().text()
//=> Pear

.eq( i )

Reduce the set of matched elements to the one at the specified index. Use .eq(-i) to count backwards from the last selected element.

$('li').eq(0).text()
//=> Apple

$('li').eq(-1).text()
//=> Pear

Manipulation

Methods for modifying the DOM structure.

.append( content, [content, ...] )

Inserts content as the last child of each of the selected elements.

$('ul').append('<li class = "plum">Plum</li>')
$.html()
//=>  <ul id = "fruits">
//      <li class = "apple">Apple</li>
//      <li class = "orange">Orange</li>
//      <li class = "pear">Pear</li>
//      <li class = "plum">Plum</li>
//    </ul>

.prepend( content, [content, ...] )

Inserts content as the first child of each of the selected elements.

$('ul').prepend('<li class = "plum">Plum</li>')
$.html()
//=>  <ul id = "fruits">
//      <li class = "plum">Plum</li>
//      <li class = "apple">Apple</li>
//      <li class = "orange">Orange</li>
//      <li class = "pear">Pear</li>
//    </ul>

.after( content, [content, ...] )

Insert content next to each element in the set of matched elements.

$('.apple').after('<li class = "plum">Plum</li>')
$.html()
//=>  <ul id = "fruits">
//      <li class = "apple">Apple</li>
//      <li class = "plum">Plum</li>
//      <li class = "orange">Orange</li>
//      <li class = "pear">Pear</li>
//    </ul>

.before( content, [content, ...] )

Insert content previous to each element in the set of matched elements.

$('.apple').before('<li class = "plum">Plum</li>')
$.html()
//=>  <ul id = "fruits">
//      <li class = "plum">Plum</li>
//      <li class = "apple">Apple</li>
//      <li class = "orange">Orange</li>
//      <li class = "pear">Pear</li>
//    </ul>

.remove( [selector] )

Removes the set of matched elements from the DOM and all their children. selector filters the set of matched elements to be removed.

$('.pear').remove()
$.html()
//=>  <ul id = "fruits">
//      <li class = "apple">Apple</li>
//      <li class = "orange">Orange</li>
//    </ul>

.replaceWith( content )

Replaces matched elements with content.

var plum = $('<li class = "plum">Plum</li>')
$('.pear').replaceWith(plum)
$.html()
//=> <ul id = "fruits">
//     <li class = "apple">Apple</li>
//     <li class = "orange">Orange</li>
//     <li class = "plum">Plum</li>
//   </ul>

.empty()

Empties an element, removing all it's children.

$('ul').empty()
$.html()
//=>  <ul id = "fruits"></ul>

.html( [htmlString] )

Gets an html content string from the first selected element. If htmlString is specified, each selected element's content is replaced by the new content.

$('.orange').html()
//=> <li class = "orange">Orange</li>

$('#fruits').html('<li class = "mango">Mango</li>').html()
//=>  <ul id="fruits">
//      <li class="mango">Mango</li>
//    </ul>

.text( [textString] )

Get the combined text contents of each element in the set of matched elements, including their descendants.. If textString is specified, each selected element's content is replaced by the new text content.

$('.orange').text()
//=> Orange

$('ul').text()
//=>  Apple
//    Orange
//    Pear

Rendering

When you're ready to render the document, you can use html utility function:

$.html()
//=>  <ul id = "fruits">
//      <li class = "apple">Apple</li>
//      <li class = "orange">Orange</li>
//      <li class = "pear">Pear</li>
//    </ul>

If you want to render just a piece of the document you can use selectors:

$('.pear').html()
//=> <li class = "pear">Pear</li>

Miscellaneous

DOM element methods that don't fit anywhere else

.toArray()

Retrieve all the DOM elements contained in the jQuery set, as an array.

$('li').toArray()
//=> [ {...}, {...}, {...} ]

.clone()

Clone the cheerio object.

var moreFruit = $('#fruits').clone()

Utilities

$.root

Sometimes you need to work with the top-level root element. To query it, you can use $.root().

$.root().append('<ul id="vegetables"></ul>').html();
//=> <ul id="fruits">...</ul><ul id="vegetables"></ul>

$.dom()

Get the raw DOM of the parsed HTML document.

$.dom()
//=> [{
//    type: 'tag',
//    name: 'ul',
//    attribs: { id: 'fruits' },
//    children:
//     [ [Object],
//       [Object],
//       [Object],
//       [Object],
//       [Object],
//       [Object],
//       [Object] ],
//    parent: null,
//    prev: null,
//    next: null
//   }]

$.isArray( array )

Checks to see the passed argument is an array.

$.isArray( $.dom() )
//=> true

$.inArray( elem, arr )

Checks to see if the element is in the array

$.makeArray( obj )

Turns an array-like object (like $) into a native array.

$.each( obj, function(index, elem) )

Generic iterator function.

$.merge( one, two )

Merge the contents of two arrays together into the first array.

Screencasts

http://vimeo.com/31950192

This video tutorial is a follow-up to Nettut's "How to Scrape Web Pages with Node.js and jQuery", using cheerio instead of JSDOM + jQuery. This video shows how easy it is to use cheerio and how much faster cheerio is than JSDOM + jQuery.

Test Coverage

Cheerio has high-test coverage, you can view the report here.

Testing

To run the test suite, download the repository, then within the cheerio directory, run:

npm install .
make test

This will download the development packages and run the test suite.

Contributors

These are some of the contributors that have made cheerio possible:

project  : cheerio
repo age : 12 months ago
commits  : 369
active   : 99 days
files    : 26
authors  : 
  245 Matt Mueller            66.4%
   68 Matthew Mueller         18.4%
   24 David Chambers          6.5%
   15 Siddharth Mahendraker   4.1%
    4 ironchefpython          1.1%
    3 Jos Shepherd            0.8%
    2 alexbardas              0.5%
    2 Rob Ashton              0.5%
    1 mattym                  0.3%
    1 Chris O'Hara            0.3%
    1 Rob "Hurricane" Ashton  0.3%
    1 Sindre Sorhus           0.3%
    1 Wayne Larsen            0.3%
    1 Ben Atkin               0.3%

Special Thanks

This library stands on the shoulders of some incredible developers. A special thanks to:

• @FB55 for node-htmlparser2 & CSSSelect: Felix has a knack for writing speedy parsing engines. He completely re-wrote both @tautologistic's node-htmlparser and @harry's node-soupselect from the ground up, making both of them much faster and more flexible. Cheerio would not be possible without his foundational work

• @jQuery team for jQuery: The core API is the best of it's class and despite dealing with all the browser inconsistencies the code base is extremely clean and easy to follow. Much of cheerio's implementation and documentation is from jQuery. Thanks guys.

• @visionmedia: The style, the structure, the open-source"-ness" of this library comes from studying TJ's style and using many of his libraries. This dude consistently pumps out high-quality libraries and has always been more than willing to help or answer questions. You rock TJ.

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2012 Matt Mueller <[e-mail]>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.