CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlvb.nettextbox
narue1992
narue1992

Reputation: 1223

VB.net Fill Textbox with HTML string

I have a string from an HTML enabled email of something like so:

</div><span color="red">Hi how are you?!</span></div><table><tr><td>Company Information</td></tr></table>

and so on [its a long string of stuff but you get the idea. There are <div>..<spans>..<table> and so forth.

I want to display the text in the text box formatted like html [which will format it based on the <table>..<span> and so forth while removing the actual text of <span> and so forth from the textbox's text.

I need this to happen because I get a page error because it reads the <span> and etc as being a security issue.

My current way of reading the whole text and removing the issues are like so:

        If Not DsAds.Tables(0).Rows(0).Item(0) Is DBNull.Value Then
            Dim bodyInitial As String = DsAds.Tables(0).Rows(0).Item(0).ToString()

            Dim newbody As String = bodyInitial.Replace("<br>", vbNewLine)
            newbody = newbody.Replace("<b>", "")
            newbody = newbody.Replace("</b>", "")
            Bodylisting.Text = newbody
        End If

I tried to encorporate the following:

Dim bodyInitial As String = DsAds.Tables(0).Rows(0).Item(0).ToString()
        Dim myEncodedString As String
        ' Encode the string.
        myEncodedString = bodyInitial.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(bodyInitial)

        Dim myWriter As New StringWriter()
        ' Decode the encoded string.
        HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(bodyInitial, myWriter)

but I get errors with HTTpUtility and strings

Question:

So my question is, is there a way to actually see the HTML formatting and fill the textbox that way, or do I have to stick with my .Replace method?

<asp:TextBox ID="Bodylisting" runat="server" style="float:left; margin:10px; padding-bottom:500px;" Width="95%" TextMode="MultiLine" ></asp:TextBox>

Upvotes: 1

Views: 874

Answers (1)

InbetweenWeekends
InbetweenWeekends

Reputation: 1414

I suggest you investigate HtmlAgilityPack. This library includes a parser giving you the ability to 'select' the <span> tags. Once you have them, you can strip them out, or grab the InnerHtml and do further processing. This is an example of how I do something similar with it.

    Private Shared Function StripHtml(html As String, xPath As String) As String
        Dim htmlDoc As New HtmlDocument()
        htmlDoc.LoadHtml(html)
        If xPath.Length > 0 Then
            Dim invalidNodes As HtmlNodeCollection = htmlDoc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes(xPath)
            If Not invalidNodes Is Nothing Then
                For Each node As HtmlNode In invalidNodes
                    node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node, True)
                Next
            End If
        End If
        Return htmlDoc.DocumentNode.WriteContentTo()


    End Function

Upvotes: 1

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