Web scraping in R with rvest

Tool
Webscrap
R
Author

Tony D

Published

March 12, 2025

A guide to web scraping in R using the rvest package, with examples of how to extract text, links, and tables from web pages.

This document provides a comprehensive guide to web scraping in R using the rvest package. It covers the entire workflow, from reading HTML content from a URL to extracting specific elements like text, links, and tables. The guide also introduces advanced techniques with read_html_live() for dynamic web pages that require interaction, such as scrolling, to load content. This document is also part of the R handbook.

loal pacakge

Code 
library(rvest)
library(tidyverse)

read html

Code 
url='https://www.r-project.org/'
page=read_html(url)

get HTML text

Code 
page %>%html_element(css = "h1") |> html_text(trim = TRUE)
[1] "The R Project for Statistical Computing"

get table

Code 
url='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_drivers'
page=read_html(url)

get 3rd table

find table xpath

Code 
table=page %>%html_element(xpath = '//*[@id="mw-content-text"]/div[1]/table[3]') |> html_table()
table |> head()
# A tibble: 6 × 11
  `Driver name`     Nationality    `Seasons competed` `Drivers' Championships`
  <chr>             <chr>          <chr>              <chr>                   
1 Carlo Abate       Italy          1962–1963          0                       
2 George Abecassis  United Kingdom 1951–1952          0                       
3 Kenny Acheson     United Kingdom 1983, 1985         0                       
4 Andrea de Adamich Italy          1968, 1970–1973    0                       
5 Philippe Adams    Belgium        1994               0                       
6 Walt Ader         United States  1950               0                       
# ℹ 7 more variables: `Race entries` <chr>, `Race starts` <chr>,
#   `Pole positions` <chr>, `Race wins` <chr>, Podiums <chr>,
#   `Fastest laps` <chr>, `Points[a]` <chr>

get 4th table

find table xpath

Code 
table=page %>%html_element(xpath = '//*[@id="mw-content-text"]/div[1]/table[4]') |> html_table()
table |> head()
# A tibble: 6 × 7
  Country     Totaldrivers Champions Championships `Race wins` `First driver(s)`
  <chr>       <chr>        <chr>     <chr>         <chr>       <chr>            
1 Argentinad… 26           1(Fangio… 5(1951, 1954… "38\n(Fang… Juan Manuel Fang…
2 Australiad… 18           2(Brabha… 4(1959, 1960… "50\n(Brab… Tony Gaze(1952 B…
3 Austriadet… 16           2(Rindt,… 4(1970, 1975… "41\n(Rind… Jochen Rindt(196…
4 Belgiumdet… 24           0         0             "11\n(Ickx… Johnny Claes(195…
5 Brazildeta… 33           3(Fittip… 8(1972, 1974… "101\n(Fit… Chico Landi(1951…
6 Canadadeta… 15           1(J. Vil… 1(1997)       "17\n(G. V… Peter Ryan(1961 …
# ℹ 1 more variable: `Most recent driver(s)/Current driver(s)` <chr>

using read_html_live() with more advance web scraping

Code 
library(rvest)
library(tidyverse)
Code 
url="https://www.whiskybase.com/whiskies/"
web <- read_html_live(url)
Code 
web$view()
Code 
web$get_scroll_position()
$x
[1] 0

$y
[1] 0
Code 
web$scroll_into_view(css='.bs5__col-lg-3:nth-child(1) li:nth-child(5) a')
Code 
url_rating='https://www.whiskybase.com/profile/georges'
content <- read_html_live(url_rating) 
info_title=content %>% html_elements('.title') %>% html_text(trim = TRUE)
info_value=content %>% html_elements('.value') %>% html_text(trim = TRUE)
info_data=data.frame(info_title,info_value)
Code 
web$view()
Code 
web %>% html_elements(".widget-article-content") |> html_text(trim = TRUE)
[1] "Welcome to WHISKYBASEIn the last 10 years whiskybase has been building into the platform that we are right now. It started as a small project by Menno but has become the main resource for whiskies. In this anniversary year we have been changing a lot within Whiskybase. This new release with a complete new design is the biggest release so far.There are lot's of new functionalities to be discovered. We are proud of the result but also have big plans for the coming years. And the past months have inspired us to build out Whiskybase even moreWe hope you will be with us for a long time and welcome new members to Whiskybase."




Code 
sessionInfo()
sessionInfo() 
R version 4.5.1 (2025-06-13)
Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20
Running under: macOS Sequoia 15.5

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.5-arm64/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib 
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.5-arm64/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib;  LAPACK version 3.12.1

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

time zone: Asia/Shanghai
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] lubridate_1.9.4 forcats_1.0.0   stringr_1.5.1   dplyr_1.1.4    
 [5] purrr_1.0.4     readr_2.1.5     tidyr_1.3.1     tibble_3.3.0   
 [9] ggplot2_3.5.2   tidyverse_2.0.0 rvest_1.0.4    

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] utf8_1.2.6         generics_0.1.4     xml2_1.3.8         stringi_1.8.7     
 [5] hms_1.1.3          digest_0.6.37      magrittr_2.0.3     evaluate_1.0.4    
 [9] grid_4.5.1         timechange_0.3.0   RColorBrewer_1.1-3 fastmap_1.2.0     
[13] jsonlite_2.0.0     processx_3.8.6     chromote_0.5.1     ps_1.9.1          
[17] promises_1.3.3     httr_1.4.7         selectr_0.4-2      scales_1.4.0      
[21] cli_3.6.5          rlang_1.1.6        withr_3.0.2        yaml_2.3.10       
[25] tools_4.5.1        tzdb_0.5.0         curl_6.4.0         vctrs_0.6.5       
[29] R6_2.6.1           lifecycle_1.0.4    htmlwidgets_1.6.4  pkgconfig_2.0.3   
[33] pillar_1.10.2      later_1.4.2        gtable_0.3.6       glue_1.8.0        
[37] Rcpp_1.0.14        xfun_0.52          tidyselect_1.2.1   rstudioapi_0.17.1 
[41] knitr_1.50         farver_2.1.2       htmltools_0.5.8.1  websocket_1.4.4   
[45] rmarkdown_2.29     compiler_4.5.1

Reference

https://r4ds.hadley.nz/webscraping.html

https://rvest.tidyverse.org/reference/read_html_live.html