Description

n8n-nodes-cheerio-html-parser

This is a custom n8n node that uses Cheerio to parse HTML content.

Features

• Parse HTML using multiple CSS selectors
• Convert selected output to array or string
• Remove unwanted elements (scripts, styles, navigation, etc.) before parsing
• Extract specific attributes from elements

Installation

1. Clone this repository
2. Install dependencies:

npm install

3. Build the node:

npm run build

4. Link to your n8n installation:

npm link

5. In your n8n installation directory, run:

npm link n8n-nodes-cheerio-html-parser

Usage

1. Add the “Cheerio HTML Parser” node to your workflow
2. Input the HTML content you want to parse
3. Add one or more selectors with:
– Name: A unique identifier for this selector result
– CSS Selector: The CSS selector to find elements (e.g., “div.content”, “p.title”, “#main”)
– Attribute (optional): Extract a specific attribute instead of text content
– Return Single Item: Choose whether to return the first match or all matches
4. Optionally specify elements to remove before parsing (e.g., “script, style, nav, footer”)
5. Connect the node to your workflow

Example

Input HTML:

  
Title
  
Some text

With selector: .content h1 the node will return:

{
  "results": {
    "title": "Title"
  },
  "totalElements": 1,
  "selectors": 1
}

Complete Example

Input HTML:

  
Welcome to my blog
  

    
First paragraph of content
    
Second paragraph of content
  

Node Configuration:

{
  "selectors": [
    {
      "name": "title",
      "selector": "h1.title",
      "singleItem": true
    },
    {
      "name": "paragraphs",
      "selector": "div.content p",
      "singleItem": false
    }
  ]
}

Output:

{
  "results": {
    "title": "Welcome to my blog",
    "paragraphs": [
      "First paragraph of content",
      "Second paragraph of content"
    ]
  },
  "totalElements": 3,
  "selectors": 2
}

Advanced Example with Element Removal

Input HTML:

  
    
    
  
  
    
    

      
Article Title
      

        
Main content here
      
    
    
  

Node Configuration:

{
  "removeElements": "script, style, nav, footer",
  "selectors": [
    {
      "name": "title",
      "selector": "h1.title",
      "singleItem": true
    },
    {
      "name": "content",
      "selector": "div.content p",
      "singleItem": true
    },
    {
      "name": "titleClass",
      "selector": "h1.title",
      "attribute": "class",
      "singleItem": true
    }
  ]
}

Output:

{
  "results": {
    "title": "Article Title",
    "content": "Main content here",
    "titleClass": "title"
  },
  "totalElements": 3,
  "selectors": 3
}

Note: The script, style, nav, and footer elements were removed before parsing, so they don’t interfere with the content extraction.

Node Structure

The node outputs an object with the following structure:

• results: An object containing the extracted data, with keys matching the selector names
• totalElements: The total number of elements found across all selectors
• selectors: The number of selectors that were processed

Development

To run tests:

npm test

License

MIT