How to parse HTML content in iOS ?

Question

I am developing an iOS app for iPhone. I am getting json data from a url.

Now, the data contains html tags which i want to parse, I an using Hpple lib to do so.

Being new to ios development, I am not able to figure out how to do so.

Data contains anchor and img tags from which i want to extract information. Also, I want to keep the format of the data as it is ( by parsing paragraph, blockquotes, strong etc... tags).

and display respective content dynamically (depending on the json data).

Obj C code that i am using to parse html:

Tutorial.h

 @interface Tutorial : NSObject
    @property (nonatomic, copy) NSString *url;

    @end

Tutorial.m

   @implementation Tutorial
    @synthesize url = _url;

    @end

    DetailViewController.m

     -(void)loadTutorials {
        //_DetailModal1[3] contain html source code.
      NSData *tutorialsHtmlData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:_DetailModal1[3]];


        TFHpple *tutorialsParser = [TFHpple hppleWithHTMLData:tutorialsHtmlData];


        NSString *tutorialsXpathQueryString = @"//a/";
        NSArray *tutorialsNodes = [tutorialsParser searchWithXPathQuery:tutorialsXpathQueryString];


        NSMutableArray *newTutorials = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:0];
        for (TFHppleElement *element in tutorialsNodes) {

            Tutorial *tutorial = [[Tutorial alloc] init];
            [newTutorials addObject:tutorial];


            tutorial.url = [element objectForKey:@"href"];
        }

        objects = newTutorials;
    [self.textView reloadData];

    }

xcode : 5.1
ios version : 7.0 and above

Answer 1

I previously had the same issue and found a solution using NSScan

NSString *inputString = @"</li>";   //this can be CSS or XML or other
NSString *startTag = @"<li class=\"foo\">";
NSString *endTag = @"</li>";

NSString *savedString = nil;

NSScanner *scanner = [[NSScanner alloc] initWithString:inputString];
[scanner scanUpToString:startTag intoString:nil];
scanner.scanLocation += [startTag length];
[scanner scanUpToString:endTag intoString:&savedString];