A pure Swift HTML parser with DOM, CSS, and jQuery-like methods for parsing, manipulating, and cleaning HTML across Apple platforms and Linux.
SwiftSoup is a pure Swift library for parsing, manipulating, and cleaning HTML and XML. It provides a jQuery-like API for traversing the DOM, extracting data with CSS selectors, and sanitizing user input to prevent XSS attacks. It solves the problem of handling HTML in Swift applications for tasks like web scraping, data processing, and content transformation.
Swift developers building applications for Apple platforms or Linux that need to parse, scrape, or manipulate HTML/XML content, such as data aggregation tools, content management systems, or security-focused apps.
Developers choose SwiftSoup for its comprehensive, intuitive API that mirrors web development patterns, its strict WHATWG HTML5 compliance ensuring reliable parsing, and its pure Swift implementation with no external dependencies, offering seamless integration across the Swift ecosystem.
SwiftSoup: Pure Swift HTML Parser, with best of DOM, CSS, and jquery (Supports Linux, iOS, Mac, tvOS, watchOS)
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Offers a familiar interface for developers with web experience, enabling easy DOM traversal and manipulation similar to jQuery, as shown in the examples using selectors and methods like append().
Includes a wide array of CSS selectors, such as pseudo-selectors and combinators, allowing precise element extraction without manual parsing, detailed in the selector overview section.
Provides whitelist-based cleaning functions to strip unsafe HTML and prevent XSS attacks, essential for secure handling of user-generated content, with examples in the clean HTML section.
Supports all Apple platforms and Linux with multiple package managers like SPM and CocoaPods, making it versatile for iOS, macOS, and server-side Swift projects, as indicated in the installation notes.
Cannot process JavaScript, so it fails to scrape content that is dynamically loaded on modern websites, limiting its effectiveness for many web scraping use cases.
For basic HTML string parsing or simple extractions, using SwiftSoup might introduce unnecessary complexity and memory usage compared to lighter alternatives like regex.
The project is maintained by a single individual (Alex Ehlke), which could lead to slower updates, limited support, or abandonment risks, as noted in the author section.