Extracting Text from HTML Strings in Node.js

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The Problem

Consider this HTML snippet:

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If you wish to extract the text so that it looks like this:

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or even better formatted with line breaks:

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You might have found that traditional methods yield outputs like FirstSecond—not ideal for readability. This issue arises because most functions will strip HTML tags but won't account for maintaining spaces or line breaks as necessary. You might have even thought about building a DOM tree and traversing nodes recursively, but there's a more efficient way to achieve the desired result.

The Solution: Using the html-to-text Package

To seamlessly convert HTML strings to plain text with proper formatting, you can use the html-to-text package. Follow these steps to get started:

Step 1: Install the Package

Open your terminal and run the following command to install the html-to-text package:

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Step 2: Import the Library

In your JavaScript file, you’ll need to import the library using the following line of code:

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Step 3: Convert HTML to Text

Now that you have the package installed and imported, you can convert your HTML string into plain text with the following code:

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Explanation of the Code

Importing the convert function: The convert function allows us to take an HTML string and convert it to plain text based on configurable options.

Providing an HTML String: Here, we encapsulated our unordered list HTML as a string.

Calling the convert function: This function processes the HTML and converts it, respecting line breaks and spaces as needed. The wordwrap option is used to specify the maximum line length; in this case, it is set to 130 characters.

Conclusion

This method is not only cleaner but also faster, making your development process more efficient. Happy coding!