Table of Contents

Quickstart

This library supports the .NET Standard 2.0. The core algorithm is a port of the Mozilla Readability library. The original library is stable and used in production inside Firefox. By relying on a library maintained by a competent organization like Mozilla we can piggyback on their hard and well-tested work.

SmartReader also add some improvements on the original library, getting get more and better metadata:

  • site name
  • an author and publication date
  • the language
  • the excerpt of the article
  • the featured image
  • a list of images found (it can optionally also download them and store as data URI)
  • an estimate of the time needed to read the article

Feel free to suggest new features.

Installation

It is trivial using the NuGet package.

PM> Install-Package SmartReader

Usage

There are mainly two ways to use the library. The first is by creating a new Reader object, with the URI as the argument, and then calling the GetArticle method to obtain the extracted Article. The second one is by using one of the static methods ParseArticle of Reader directly, to return an Article. Both ways are available also through an async method, called respectively GetArticleAsync and ParseArticleAsync. The advantage of using an object, instead of the static method, is that it gives you the chance to set some options.

There is also the option to parse directly a String or Stream that you have obtained by some other way. This is available either with ParseArticle methods or by using the proper Reader constructor. In either case, you also need to give the original URI. It will not re-download the text, but it needs the URI to make some checks and fixing the links present on the page. If you cannot provide the original uri, you can use a fake one, like https:\\localhost.

If the extraction fails, the returned Article object will have the field IsReadable set to false.

The content of the article is unstyled, but it is wrapped in a div with the id readability-content that you can style yourself.

The library tries to detect the correct encoding of the text, if the correct tags are present in the text.

Getting Images

On the Article object you can call GetImagesAsync to obtain a Task for a list of Image objects, representing the images found in the extracted article. The method is async because it makes HEAD Requests, to obtain the size of the images and only returns the ones that are bigger than the specified size. The size by default is 75KB. This is done to exclude things such as images used in the UI.

On the Article object you can also call ConvertImagesToDataUriAsync to inline the images found in the article using the data URI scheme. The method is async. This will insert the images into the Content property of the Article. This may significantly increase the size of Content.

This data URI scheme is not efficient, because is using Base64 to encode the bytes of the image. Base64 encoded data is approximately 33% larger than the original data. The purpose of this method is to provide an offline article that can be fully stored long term. This is useful in case the original article is not accessible anymore. The method only converts the images that are bigger than the specified size. The size by default is 75KB. This is done to exclude things such as images used in the UI.

Notice that this method will not store other external elements that are not images, such as embedded videos.

Examples

Using the GetArticle method.

SmartReader.Reader sr = new SmartReader.Reader("https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/humans-must-become-cyborgs-to-survive-says-elon-musk/");

sr.Debug = true;
sr.LoggerDelegate = Console.WriteLine;

SmartReader.Article article = sr.GetArticle();
var images = article.GetImagesAsync();

if(article.IsReadable)
{
	// do something with it	
}

Using the ParseArticle static method.

SmartReader.Article article = SmartReader.Reader.ParseArticle("https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/humans-must-become-cyborgs-to-survive-says-elon-musk/");

if(article.IsReadable)
{
	Console.WriteLine($"Article title {article.Title}");
}

Settings

The following settings on the Reader class can be modified.

  • int MaxElemsToParse
    Max number of nodes supported by this parser.
    Default: 0 (no limit)
  • int NTopCandidates
    The number of top candidates to consider when analyzing how tight the competition is among candidates.
    Default: 5
  • bool Debug
    Set the Debug option. If set to true the library writes the data on Logger.
    Default: false
  • Action<string> LoggerDelegate
    Delegate of a function that accepts as argument a string; it will receive log messages.
    Default: does not do anything
  • ReportLevel Logging
    Level of information written with the LoggerDelegate. The valid values are the ones for the enum ReportLevel: Issue or Info. The first level logs only errors or issue that could prevent correctly obtaining an article. The second level logs all the information needed for debugging a problematic article.
    Default: ReportLevel.Issue
  • bool ContinueIfNotReadable
    The library tries to determine if it will find an article before actually trying to do it. This option decides whether to continue if the library heuristics fails. This value is ignored if Debug is set to true
    Default: true
  • int CharThreshold
    The minimum number of characters an article must have in order to return a result.
    Default: 500
  • bool KeepClasses
    Whether to preserve or clean CSS classes.
    Default: false
  • String[] ClassesToPreserve
    The CSS classes that must be preserved in the article, if we opt to not keep all of them.
    Default: ["page"]
  • bool DisableJSONLD
    The library look first at JSON-LD to determine metadata. This setting gives you the option of disabling it
    Default: false
  • Dictionary<string, int> MinContentLengthReadearable
    The minimum node content length used to decide if the document is readerable (i.e., the library will find something useful)
    You can provide a dictionary with values based on language.
    Default: 140
  • int MinScoreReaderable
    The minumum cumulated 'score' used to determine if the document is readerable
    Default: 20
  • Func<IElement, bool> IsNodeVisible
    The function used to determine if a node is visible. Used in the process of determinting if the document is readerable
    Default: NodeUtility.IsProbablyVisible
  • int AncestorsDepth
    The default level of depth a node must have to be used for scoring.Nodes without as many ancestors as this level are not counted
    Default: 5
  • int ParagraphThreshold
    The default number of characters a node must have in order to be used for scoring
    Default: 25

Settings Notes

The settings MinScoreReaderable, CharThreshold and MinContentLengthReadearable are used in the process of determining if an article is readerable or if the result found is valid.

The algorithm for scoring assign some score to each valid node, then it determines the best node depending on their relationships, i.e., what score ancestors and descendants of the node have. The settings NTopCandidates, AncestorsDepth and ParagraphThreshold can help you customize this process. It makes sense to change them if you are interested in some sites that uses a particular style or design of coding.

The settings ParagraphThreshold, MinContentLengthReadearable and CharThreshold should be customized for content written in non-alphabetical languages.

Article Model

A brief overview of the Article model returned by the library.

  • Uri Uri
    Original Uri
  • String Title
    Title
  • String Byline
    Byline of the article, usually containing author and publication date
  • String Dir
    Direction of the text
  • String FeaturedImage
    The main image of the article
  • String Content
    Html content of the article
  • String TextContent
    The plain text of the article with basic formatting
  • String Excerpt
    A summary of the article, based on metadata or first paragraph
  • String Language
    Language string (es. 'en-US')
  • String Author
    Author of the article
  • String SiteName
    Name of the site that hosts the article
  • int Length
    Length of the text of the article
  • TimeSpan TimeToRead
    Average time needed to read the article
  • DateTime? PublicationDate
    Date of publication of the article
  • bool IsReadable
    Indicate whether we successfully find an article

It's important to be aware that the fields Byline, Author and PublicationDate are found independently of each other. So there might be some inconsistencies and unexpected data. For instance, Byline may be a string in the form "@Date by @Author" or "@Author, @Date" or any other combination used by the publication.

The TimeToRead calculation is based on the research found in Standardized Assessment of Reading Performance: The New International Reading Speed Texts IReST. It should be accurate if the article is written in one of the languages in the research, but it is just an educated guess for the others languages.

The FeaturedImage property holds the image indicated by the Open Graph or Twitter meta tags. If neither of these is present, and you called the GetImagesAsync method, it will be set with the first image found.

The TextContent property is based on the pure text content of the HTML (i.e., the concatenations of text nodes. Then we apply some basic formatting, like removing double spaces or the newlines left by the formatting of the HTML code. We also add meaningful newlines for P and BR nodes.

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