Download the HTML source from a website

Daily Coding Tip 001

Image by James Osborne from Pixabay

Here’s how to get the underlying HTML from a webpage.

	import Foundation
	func getHTMLSource() -> String {
	//Create the URL
	guard let url = URL(string: "https://apple.com") else {
	fatalError("Could not create URL")
	}
	// Try downloading the HTML source
	do {
	return try String(contentsOf: url, encoding: .utf8)
	}
	//If there is an error
	catch let error {
	fatalError("Failed to download HTML due to error: \(error.localizedDescription)")
	}
	}

view raw getHTMLSource.swift hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Creating the source URL

I’m using the Apple website in my example, but you can use whatever you want. If you’re unfamiliar with guard let, this is allowing us to optionally bind the result of an optional initialiser. URL can fail and return nil, depending on whether t…