AngleSharp is a .NET library that gives you the ability to parse angle bracket based hyper-texts like HTML, SVG, and MathML. In the future XML might be included, however, since .NET offers a variety of capable XML parsers there is a discussion about redundancy. An important aspect of AngleSharp is that CSS can also be parsed. The parser is build upon the official W3C specification. This produces a perfectly portable HTML5 DOM representation of the given source code. Also current features such as querySelector or querySelectorAll work for tree traversal.
The advantage over similar libraries like the HtmlAgilityPack is that e.g. CSS (including selectors) is already build in. Also the parser uses the HTML 5.1 specification, which defines error handling and element correction. While the HtmlAgilityPack focuses on giving .NET users a nice and easy way to handle HTML documents, this library focuses on giving web developers working with C# all possibilities as they would have in a browser using JavaScript. Hence the DOM is build in a more reliable, standard-conform and faster way than with the other solutions.
The performance of AngleSharp is quite close to the performance of browsers. Even very large pages can be processed within milliseconds. AngleSharp tries to minimize memory allocations and reuses elements internally to avoid unnecessary object creation.
Documentation is available in form of the public Wiki here at GitHub.
More information is also available by following some of the hyper references mentioned in the Wiki. In-depth articles will be published on the CodeProject, with links being placed in the Wiki at GitHub.
The project aims to bring a solid implementation of the W3C DOM for HTML, SVG, MathML, XML and CSS to the CLR, written in C#. The idea is that you can can basically do everything with the DOM in C# that you can do in JavaScript.
Most parts of the DOM are included, even though some may still miss their (right) implementation. The goal for v1.0 is to have almost everything implemented according to the official W3C specification (with useful extensions by the WHATWG).
The API is close to the DOM4 specification, however, the naming has been adjusted to apply with .NET conventions. Nevertheless, to make AngleSharp really useful for, e.g., a JavaScript engine, attributes have been placed on the corresponding interfaces (and methods, properties, ...) to indicate the status of the field in the official specification. This allows automatic generation of DOM objects with the official API.
This is a long-term project which will eventually result in a state of the art parser for the most important angle bracket based hyper-texts (and related description languages like CSS).
Update With version v0.6.0 the new API has been published. This API seems to be much cleaner and more extensible than the previous one. It also separates the implementation from the specification, which is important for working with the API, as new changes are less likely to break existing code (API usage). Most API changes have also been included to mainly reflect DOM4, with some (obsolete) parts being removed.
0.6.0:
- Implemented parsing of CSS media queries
- Improved URL parsing according to RFC 3986
- 100% finished HTML5 parser
- 98% finished CSS3 parser
- CSS properties and values defined and implemented
- CSS model implemented (i.e. getComputedStyle works)
- Tree traversal included (
NodeIteratorandTreeWalker) - Configuration model changed
- API changed (now interface driven)
- New source management for better handling and performance
0.5.0:
- Major API changes (DI is now the only singleton)
- 98% finished HTML5 parser
- 95% finished CSS3 parser
- 85% finished HTML DOM
- Included
Submit()method for forms
0.4.0:
- Final alpha version
- 98% finished HTML5 parser
- 90% finished CSS3 parser
- 85% finished HTML DOM
- Removed XML parser (until HTML and CSS are finished)
- Included WebRequester
0.3.0:
- Alpha version
- 95% finished HTML5 parser
- 90% finished CSS3 parser
- 85% finished HTML DOM
- Includes non-validating XML parser
- QuerySelectors etc. are fully working
- DOMAttribute applied where possible
0.2.0:
- First released version (pre-alpha)
- 95% finished HTML5 parser
- 70% finished CSS3 parser
- 80% finished HTML DOM
- SVG and MathML DOM are not implemented yet
- Performance seems to be quite OK
The roadmap presents a draft on what is about to be implemented, and when. The priorities might change, which will affect the roadmap. Additionally the implementation speed will be impacted by factors like people participating in the project and design decisions.
The time estimates are speculative, which means that the project could be totally off those predictions. Finding talented (and motivated) collaborators would certainly speed up the project.
(September 2014) 0.7.0
- Draft interfaces for optional resource and rendering defined
- MathML DOM finished
- SVG document included
- SVG DOM skeleton implemented
(December 2014) 0.8.0
- Full HTML DOM implemented
- CSS computation works with everything
(February 2015) 0.9.0
- Most important SVG elements implemented
- HTML5 parser at 100% with complete DOM, MathML and SVG
(July 2016) 1.0.0
- Final release of the first version
- Parsing HTML (fragments)
- Constructing HTML (e.g. view-engine)
- Minifying CSS, HTML
- Querying document elements
- Crawling information
- HTML / DOM Unit Tests
- ...
If you know some feature that AngleSharp is currently missing, and you are willing to implement the feature, then your contribution is more than welcome! Also if you have a really cool idea - do not be shy, we'd like to hear it.
If you have an idea how to improve the API (or what is missing) then posts / messages are also welcome. There are also ongoing discussions about some styles that are used by AngleSharp (e.g. HTMLDocument instead of HtmlDocument). If you have a strong opinion about one or the other then participating in those discussions would certainly be helpful.
Copyright (c) 2013-2014, Florian Rappl and collaborators. All rights reserved.
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