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fix: default read_html() encoding to UTF-8 #476

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Merged
jeroen merged 3 commits into from
Jun 2, 2026
Merged

fix: default read_html() encoding to UTF-8 #476

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Copilot Jun 2, 2026
81c4ffb
fix: default read_html() encoding to UTF-8 to prevent double-encoding…
Copilot Jun 2, 2026
b945ab3
style: remove extra blank line in test file
Copilot Jun 2, 2026
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3 changes: 3 additions & 0 deletions NEWS.md
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
# xml2 1.5.2

* `read_html()` now defaults to `encoding = "UTF-8"` to prevent double-encoding
of UTF-8 content on Windows with codepage 65001 (#490).

* Enable the myExternalEntityLoader also on libxml 2.14.4 for MacOS

# xml2 1.5.1
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10 changes: 6 additions & 4 deletions R/xml_parse.R
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Expand Up @@ -30,7 +30,9 @@
#' @param encoding Specify a default encoding for the document. Unless
#' otherwise specified XML documents are assumed to be in UTF-8 or
#' UTF-16. If the document is not UTF-8/16, and lacks an explicit
#' encoding directive, this allows you to supply a default.
#' encoding directive, this allows you to supply a default. For
#' `read_html()` the default is `"UTF-8"` since the vast majority of
#' modern web pages are UTF-8 encoded.
#' @param ... Additional arguments passed on to methods.
#' @param as_html Optionally parse an xml file as if it's html.
#' @param base_url When loading from a connection, raw vector or literal
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -74,7 +76,7 @@ read_xml <- function(
#' @rdname read_xml
read_html <- function(
x,
encoding = "",
encoding = "UTF-8",
...,
options = c("RECOVER", "NOERROR", "NOBLANKS", "HUGE")
) {
Expand All @@ -84,7 +86,7 @@ read_html <- function(
#' @export
read_html.default <- function(
x,
encoding = "",
encoding = "UTF-8",
...,
options = c("RECOVER", "NOERROR", "NOBLANKS", "HUGE")
) {
Expand All @@ -102,7 +104,7 @@ read_html.default <- function(
#' @export
read_html.response <- function(
x,
encoding = "",
encoding = "UTF-8",
options = c("RECOVER", "NOERROR", "NOBLANKS"),
...
) {
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8 changes: 8 additions & 0 deletions tests/testthat/test-xml_parse.R
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Expand Up @@ -115,6 +115,14 @@ test_that("read_html works with non-ASCII encodings", {
)
})

test_that("read_html defaults to UTF-8 encoding for raw bytes", {
# Regression test: UTF-8 HTML passed as raw bytes should not be double-encoded
# (previously broken on Windows codepage 65001 when encoding defaulted to "")
html_utf8 <- charToRaw("<html><body>\u00c4pfel</body></html>")
res <- read_html(html_utf8)
expect_equal(xml_text(xml_find_first(res, "//body")), "\u00c4pfel")
})

test_that("read_xml and read_html fail with > 1 input", {
expect_snapshot(error = TRUE, {
read_xml(c("foo", "bar"))
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