An XML, HTML, and JSON data extraction tool
Conclusion
While there are many other ways to scrape and convert XML, HTML, and JSON documents, Xidel is a multiplatform tool with almost no dependencies. It's fun, relatively easy to learn, and its mailing list is very responsive (I want to specifically thank user Reino for explaining how to process JSON arrays with Xidel).
Above all, Xidel is a simple package that can grab and reorganize data in several standard formats, from very different sources, in a very flexible, efficient way. You can even test Xidel online [8]. I recommend giving Xidel a try.
Infos
- Xidel: http://www.videlibri.de/xidel.html
- XQuery tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xquery_intro.asp
- XPath: http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_XPath.asp
- JSON: http://www.json.org
- Turing Complete explained: https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/71473/what-does-being-turing-complete-mean
- "Making an Online Archive of All Your Bookmarked Pages" by Marco Fioretti, Linux Magazine, issue 232, March 2020, https://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2020/232/Create-a-Personal-Web-Archive/(language)/eng-US
- Greasemonkey script for Xidel patterns: https://userscripts-mirror.org/scripts/show/144991
- Xidel online demo: http://www.videlibri.de/cgi-bin/xidelcgi
The Author
Marco Fioretti (http://mfioretti.substack.com) is a freelance author, trainer, and researcher based in Rome, Italy, who has been working with free/open source software since 1995, and on open digital standards since 2005. Marco also is a board member of the Free Knowledge Institute (http://freeknowledge.eu).
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