Read <div> HTML tag with {rvest} using CSS selector

rvest_Read_div.R

# Read <div> HTML tag with {rvest} using CSS selector
# ====================================================

# Load library
library(rvest)

# -----------------------
# Read the web page
# -----------------------
link <- "http://www.adirondacklakessurvey.org/alscrpt.inc.php?alscpond=020225B&pname=ALLEGANY%20BROOK%20POND"
# NOTE: is ethical to store the page and not read it unnecessarily too many times, 
# overloading their server
link.scrap <- read_html(link)

# -----------------------
# Read division
# -----------------------
div.location <- 
    html_nodes(x   = link.scrap, 
               css = '#historic_report_location') %>%
    html_text(trim = TRUE) %>% # note the trim = TRUE to trim leading and trailing spaces
    strsplit(split = '\n') %>% # split by \n (new line), will return a list
    unlist() %>% # or use .[[1]] or `[[`(1) to select only the first element [[1]] of the list
    trimws()     # remove leading and trailing whitespaces
    # If the `trim = TRUE` is not used in `html_text(trim = TRUE)` above,
    # then an alternative for skipping unwanted empty values would be to subset:
    # .[. != ""] # skip empty values, where . (dot) symbolize data as inherited
    # from the operations above. 
    # If doing so, then don’t forget the `%>%` operator after `trimws()` above.

div.location
##  [1] "Location/General"               "Pond Name: ALLEGANY BROOK POND" "Pond #: 020225B"               
##  [4] "Town: Black Brook"              "County: Clinton"                "USGS Quad: Redford"            
##  [7] "Watershed: Champlain"           "In the Adk park?: Y"            "Part of the ALTM program?: N"  
## [10] "Ownership: Private"             "Primitive Area: None"           "Wilderness Area: None"         
## [13] "Wild Forest Area: None" 

# To understand why the need of splitting by \n (new line) was needed, 
# run only the html_nodes() and html_text() part:
div.location <- 
    html_nodes(x   = link.scrap, 
               css = '#historic_report_location') %>%
    html_text(trim = TRUE)

# Now, print div.location with print() and cat()
# note that cat() knows how to interpret \n (new line)
print(div.location)
cat(div.location)
# All in all, the wanted information is separated by \n (new line)