Scraping html tables into R data frames using the XML package

Question

How do I scrape html tables using the XML package?

Take, for example, this wikipedia page on the Brazilian soccer team. I would like to read it in R and get the \"li

Answer 1

The rvest along with xml2 is another popular package for parsing html web pages.

library(rvest)
theurl <- "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_national_football_team"
file<-read_html(theurl)
tables<-html_nodes(file, "table")
table1 <- html_table(tables[4], fill = TRUE)

The syntax is easier to use than the xml package and for most web pages the package provides all of the options ones needs.