# Introduction to parsing HTML files with Docling

Docling

<!-- image -->

Docling simplifies document processing, parsing diverse formats - including HTML - and providing seamless integrations with the gen AI ecosystem.

## Supported file formats

Docling supports multiple file formats..

- Advanced PDF understanding
PDF

<!-- image -->
- Microsoft Office DOCX
DOCX

<!-- image -->
- HTML files (with optional support for images)
HTML

<!-- image -->

### Three backends for handling HTML files

Docling has three backends for parsing HTML files:

1. **HTMLDocumentBackend** Ignores images
2. **HTMLDocumentBackendImagesInline** Extracts images inline
3. **HTMLDocumentBackendImagesReferenced** Extracts images as references