# htmlRead

Read a HTML stream from a local or distant file

## Calling Sequence

                doc = htmlRead(path [, encoding])

## Arguments

path

  a string, the path to the file to read.

encoding

  a string, the file encoding.

doc

  a mlist typed XMLDoc

## Description

Read and parse a HTML file. The returned document allows to access to the DOM tree which is kept in memory.

In general, a HTML file cannot be read with a XML parser because a HTML is rarely well-formated, so a HTML parser is required and it is more compliant.

Once the HTML file is parsed, it can be seen as a XML file in memory, so usual operations can be done.

The encoding argument is used to precise the file encoding.

It is important to notice that the tree must be freed (to avoid memory leaks) with the function xmlDelete.

## Examples

        doc = htmlRead("http://www.scilab.org");
        e = doc.root.children(1).children(1)
        e.name
        e.content

        // Now we can retrieve all the nodes with an 'href' attribute
        q = xmlXPath(doc, "//*[@href]");
        q(1).attributes

        // We delete the doc
        xmlDelete(doc);

## See Also

- htmlReadStr
- xmlGetOpenDocs
- xmlDelete
- xmlDocument
- xmlXPath

## History

5.5.0
HTML features added.