Parse an HTML table into a data frame

html_table() parses a <table> element into a data frame, following the same algorithm that browsers use to form a table. Cells that span multiple rows or columns (via the rowspan and colspan attributes) have their values repeated in every cell they cover, and rows with missing cells are padded with NAs.

html_table2() works just like html_table() but uses html_text2() instead of html_text() to extract the text from each cell. This ensures that the cell text more closely resembles what you see in a browser.

Usage

html_table(
  x,
  header = NA,
  trim = TRUE,
  fill = deprecated(),
  dec = ".",
  na.strings = "NA",
  convert = TRUE
)

html_table2(
  x,
  header = NA,
  trim = TRUE,
  dec = ".",
  na.strings = "NA",
  convert = TRUE
)

Arguments

x

A document (from read_html()), node set (from html_elements()), node (from html_element()), or session (from session()).

header

Use first row as header? If NA, will use first row if it consists of <th> tags.

If TRUE, column names are left exactly as they are in the source document, which may require post-processing to generate a valid data frame.

trim

Remove leading and trailing whitespace within each cell?

fill

Missing cells in tables are now always automatically filled with NA.

dec

The character used as decimal place marker.

na.strings

Character vector of values that will be converted to NA if convert is TRUE.

convert

If TRUE, will run type.convert() to interpret texts as logical, integer, double, or NA.

Value

When applied to a single element, html_table() returns a single tibble. When applied to multiple elements or a document, html_table() returns a list of tibbles.

Examples

sample1 <- minimal_html("<table>
  <tr><th>Col A</th><th>Col B</th></tr>
  <tr><td>1</td><td>x</td></tr>
  <tr><td>4</td><td>y</td></tr>
  <tr><td>10</td><td>z</td></tr>
</table>")
sample1 |>
  html_element("table") |>
  html_table()
#> # A tibble: 3 × 2
#>   `Col A` `Col B`
#>     <int> <chr>  
#> 1       1 x      
#> 2       4 y      
#> 3      10 z      

# Values in merged cells will be duplicated
sample2 <- minimal_html("<table>
  <tr><th>A</th><th>B</th><th>C</th></tr>
  <tr><td>1</td><td>2</td><td>3</td></tr>
  <tr><td colspan='2'>4</td><td>5</td></tr>
  <tr><td>6</td><td colspan='2'>7</td></tr>
</table>")
sample2 |>
  html_element("table") |>
  html_table()
#> # A tibble: 3 × 3
#>       A     B     C
#>   <int> <int> <int>
#> 1     1     2     3
#> 2     4     4     5
#> 3     6     7     7

# If a row is missing cells, they'll be filled with NAs
sample3 <- minimal_html("<table>
  <tr><th>A</th><th>B</th><th>C</th></tr>
  <tr><td colspan='2'>1</td><td>2</td></tr>
  <tr><td colspan='2'>3</td></tr>
  <tr><td>4</td></tr>
</table>")
sample3 |>
  html_element("table") |>
  html_table()
#> # A tibble: 3 × 3
#>       A     B     C
#>   <int> <int> <int>
#> 1     1     1     2
#> 2     3     3    NA
#> 3     4    NA    NA

# html_table2() uses html_text2() so often has better output for
# text heavy tables
sample4 <- minimal_html("<table>
  <tr><th>Col A</th><th>Col B</th></tr>
  <tr><td>1<br>2</td><td>x<br>y</td></tr>
</table>")
sample4 |> html_element("table") |> html_table()
#> # A tibble: 1 × 2
#>   `Col A` `Col B`
#>     <int> <chr>  
#> 1      12 xy     
sample4 |> html_element("table") |> html_table2()
#> # A tibble: 1 × 2
#>   `Col A` `Col B`
#>   <chr>   <chr>  
#> 1 "1\n2"  "x\ny"