How to read and parse html in Nodejs?

Question

I have a simple project. I need the help this is a related project. I need to read an HTML file and then convert it to JSON format. I want to get the matches as code and text. How I achieve this?

In this way, I have two HTML tags

<p>In practice, it is usually a bad idea to modify global variables inside the function scope since it often is the cause of confusion and weird errors that are hard to debug.<br />
If you want to modify a global variable via a function, it is recommended to pass it as an argument and reassign the return-value.<br />
For example:</p>

<pre><code class="{python} language-{python}">a_var = 2

def a_func(some_var):
    return 2**3

a_var = a_func(a_var)
print(a_var)
</code></pre>

mycode:

const fs = require('fs')
const showdown  = require('showdown')

var read =  fs.readFileSync('./test.md', 'utf8')

function importer(mdFile) {

    var result = []
    let json = {}

    var converter = new showdown.Converter()
    var text      = mdFile
    var html      = converter.makeHtml(text);

    for (var i = 0; i < html.length; i++) {
        htmlRead = html[i]
        if(html == html.match(/<p>(.*?)<\/p>/g))
            json.text = html.match(/<p>(.*?)<\/p>/g)

       if(html == html.match(/<pre>(.*?)<\/pre>/g))
            json.code = html.match(/<pre>(.*?)<\/pre>/g

    }

    return html
}
console.log(importer(read))

How do I get these matches on the code?

new code : I write all the p tags in the same json, how to write each p tag into different json blocks?

$('html').each(function(){
    if ($('p').text != undefined) {
        json.code = $('p').text()
        json.language = "Text"
    }
})

Solution

I would recommend using Cheerio. It tries to implement jQuery functionality to Node.js.

const cheerio = require('cheerio')

var html = "<p>In practice, it is usually a bad idea to modify global variables inside the function scope since it often be the cause of confusion and weird errors that are hard to debug.<br />If you want to modify a global variable via a function, it is recommended to pass it as an argument and reassign the return-value.<br />For example:</p>"

const $ = cheerio.load(html)
var paragraph = $('p').html(); //Contents of paragraph. You can manipulate this in any other way you like

//...You would do the same for any other element you require

You should check out Cheerio and read its documentation. I find it really neat!

Edit: for the new part of your question

You can iterate over every element and insert it into an array of JSON objects like this:

var jsonObject = []; //An array of JSON objects that will hold everything
$('p').each(function() { //Loop for each paragraph
   //Now let's take the content of the paragraph and put it into a json object
    jsonObject.push({"paragraph":$(this).html()}); //Add data to the main jsonObject    
});

So the resulting array of JSON objects should look something like this:

[
  {
    "paragraph": "text"
  },
  {
    "paragraph": "text 2"
  },
  {
    "paragraph": "text 3"
  }
]

I believe You should also read up on JSON and how it works.

Comments

[Kucka Prozova]

Yeah, that's exactly what I did. But I have a question, I write all the p tags in the same json, how to write each p tag into different json blocks? I updated question.

[Ayo Reis]

Does anyone know a only JS alternative?