New Release! Now uses lexbor_erl

ModestEx

A library to do pipeable transformations on html strings with CSS selectors, e.g. find(), prepend(), append(), replace() etc.

Elixir wrapper for lexborisov’s ModestLexbor C Library.

Lexbor browser engine crafted entirely in C (there’s no school like the old school)

• ModestLexbor
  • HTML5 parsing library in pure C99
  • fully conformant with the HTML5 spec

All Lexbor-related features are implemented as a port binding through the Erlang lexbor_erl library.

For news and updates please check out the forum discussion.

Example

Total 16 features implemented. See complete feature list.

Build transformation pipelines…

test "build up a complete DOM" do
  result = ""
  |> ModestEx.serialize()
  |> ModestEx.append("body", "<div>")
  |> ModestEx.set_attribute("div", "class", "col-md-12")
  |> ModestEx.append("div", "<div>")
  |> ModestEx.set_attribute("div.col-md-12 div", "class", "col-md-6")
  |> ModestEx.append("div.col-md-12 div", "<a></a>")
  |> ModestEx.set_text("a", "Hello")

  copy = ModestEx.find(result, "div.col-md-12 div")
  |> ModestEx.set_text("a", "World")
  
  result = ModestEx.insert_after(result, "div.col-md-12 div", copy)
  |> ModestEx.set_attribute("div.col-md-6:first-of-type a", "href", "https://elixir-lang.org")
  |> ModestEx.set_attribute("div.col-md-6:last-of-type a", "href", "https://google.de")
  
  assert result == "<div class=\"col-md-12\"><div class=\"col-md-6\"><a href=\"https://elixir-lang.org\">Hello</a></div><div class=\"col-md-6\"><a href=\"https://google.de\">World</a></div></div>"
end

Breaking Changes

Please note, after migrating to lexbor_erl not all features are supported. See CHANGELOG

Supported CSS Selectors

All common CSS Selectors are supported. Total 38 selector patterns implemented. See complete list of supported CSS selectors.

Installation

Available on hex.

def deps do
  [
    {:modest_ex, "~> 2.0.0"}
  ]
end

Target dependencies

• CMake 3.10+
• Lexbor C library

macOS:

brew install lexbor

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install liblexbor-dev

From source:

git clone https://github.com/lexbor/lexbor.git
cd lexbor && mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. && make && sudo make install

Compile and test

mix deps.get
mix compile
mix test

Roadmap

See CHANGELOG.

• [x] Bindings
  • [x] Call as C-Node (removed in 2x)
  • [x] Call via lexbor_erl port
• [x] Tests
  • [x] Feature tests
  • [x] GitHub Actions CI (Ubuntu, macOS)
• [ ] Features
  • [x] Find nodes using a CSS selector
  • [x] Serialize any string with valid or broken html
  • [x] Get attribute with optional CSS selector
  • [x] Set attribute with optional CSS selector
  • [x] Get text with optional CSS selector
  • [x] Set text with optional CSS selector
  • [x] Remove a node from html
  • [x] Append node to another node
  • [x] Prepend node to another node
  • [x] Insert node before another node
  • [x] Insert node after another node
  • [x] Replace node with another node
  • [ ] Slice html to a subset of nodes
  • [ ] Get position of node in relation to its parent
  • [ ] Wrap node with another node
  • [ ] Streaming of large documents
  • [ ] Pretty print html
  • [ ] Compare two html strings
  • [ ] Transform html string by list of actions
• [ ] Custom CSS selector for pseudo class :contains(text) (not supported by Lexbor)
• [x] Scope flag to control serialization (supported to be backwards compatible with Modest)
• [x] List of supported CSS Selectors
• [x] Documentation
• [x] Publish as hex package

License

ModestEx is under LGPL license. Check the LICENSE file for more details.

Icon Credit

humble by Eliricon from the Noun Project