How to get the html content from UIWebView?

Question

I'm loading a web page using UIWebView

let urlStr = "http://duckduckgo.com"
let urlReq = NSMutableURLRequest(URL: NSURL(string: urlStr)!)
webView.loadRequest(urlReq)

Then, when the page has finished loading, I want to access the html content

func webViewDidFinishLoad(webView: UIWebView) {
    let href = webView.stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString("window.location.href")
    println("window.location.href  = \(href)")

    let doc = webView.stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString("document")
    println("document = \(doc)")
}

But document just return an empty string (Optional("")). The window.location.href part is working fine. What I'm I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I think you have to evaluate the javascript like this:

let doc = webView.stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString("document.documentElement.outerHTML")

In this case you get the entire HTML.

Answer 2

Now, when UIWebView is deprecated, you'll need to use syntax like this:

webView.evaluateJavaScript("document.documentElement.outerHTML") { (html, error) in
    guard let html = html as? String else {
        print(error)
        return
    }
    // Here you have HTML of the whole page.
}

After that you can create a function like this that'll easily get HTML from webView:

func getHTML(_ completion: @escaping (String) -> ()) {
    webView.evaluateJavaScript("document.documentElement.outerHTML") { (html, error) in
        guard let html = html as? String else {
            print(error)
            return
        }
        completion(html)
    }
}

getHTML { html in
    // Here you have HTML string
    print(html) // for example...
}