HTML parsing using DOM-Java

Question

I want to parse a HTML file using Java and i have used DocumentBuilder class for it. My HTML contains a <img src="xyz"> tag, without a closing </img> tag,which is allowed in browser.But when i give it to DocumentBuilder for parsing it gives me this error

The element type "img" must be terminated by the matching end-tag </img>.

Java :

DocumentBuilderFactory docBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder docBuilder = docBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document document = docBuilder.parse(is);

What should i do to get rid of this error?

The element type "img" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "</img>". You probably need valid html to parse it. All tags must have ending part, or at least be defined as <img src="xyz" /> — Jakuje
– Jakuje, Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 9:36
@Jakuje but <img> without a closing tag is a valid html.For ex : w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_image_test — Vallabh Lakade
– Vallabh Lakade, Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 9:38
libxml2 doesn't have this problem. It shuts up about the Official Rules and just parses that HTML, subject to varying levels of validation... — Phlip
– Phlip, Commented Jul 11, 2020 at 13:17

Wander Nauta · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-11 09:40:59Z

5

DocumentBuilder is part of Java's XML parsing framework. An XML parser will not correctly parse HTML: the languages look similar, but XML has stricter requirements. (You've already seen one of the differences: in XML, all tags should have a matching end tag, while in HTML some tags do and some don't.)

Try a HTML parser instead. I've heard good things about jsoup (http://jsoup.org/).

edited Aug 11, 2015 at 9:40

answered Aug 11, 2015 at 9:34

Wander Nauta

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2 Comments

Vallabh Lakade Over a year ago

Thanks i will try that.But are there any disadvantages of using jsoup?

Phlip Over a year ago

I need to run XPath queries on the HTML. Just like (ahem) Gnome's libxml2 can do...

Elliotte Rusty Harold · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-19 15:24:18Z

0

You can also use TagSoup to parse HTML as if it were XML, though that will give you SAX rather than DOM.

answered Jan 19, 2016 at 15:24

Elliotte Rusty Harold

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