Pup - Command Line HTML Processor

Pup is a command-line tool for processing HTML. Filter and extract data from HTML using CSS selectors. Learn how to install and use pup for HTML parsing.

Pup

Pup: Command Line HTML Processor

Pup is a powerful command-line tool designed for processing HTML. It allows developers to efficiently filter and extract specific parts of an HTML document using familiar CSS selectors. This makes it an invaluable utility for web scraping, data extraction, and automating tasks involving HTML content.

Installation and Basic Usage

To get started with Pup, you'll need to have Go installed on your system. The installation is straightforward:

# Install pup. Requires `go`.
go install github.com/ericchiang/pup

Common Pup Commands

Pup offers flexible ways to interact with HTML. Here are some common examples:

Colorizing and Indenting HTML

You can use Pup to make your HTML more readable by indenting and colorizing it. This is useful for inspecting HTML structure:

# Indent and colorize HTML.
cat file.html | pup --color

Filtering by Tag

To extract all elements of a specific tag, like the title, you can use a simple selector:

# Filter by tag.
cat file.html | pup 'title'

Filtering by Content

Pup supports pseudoclasses, allowing you to filter elements based on their content. For instance, to find elements containing the text "History":

# Pseudoclass: filter by content "History".
cat file.html | pup ':contains("History")'

Multiple Selectors

You can also specify multiple CSS selectors to extract different sets of elements in a single command:

# Multiple groups of selectors.
cat file.html | pup 'title, h1 span[dir="auto"]'

Benefits of Using Pup

Pup simplifies the process of working with HTML on the command line. Its intuitive use of CSS selectors makes it easy to learn and apply for various development tasks. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting, Pup can significantly streamline your workflow when dealing with HTML data.

Further Resources