CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.net-mvc-3
Joper
Joper

Reputation: 8219

ASP.NET MVC 3 Parse simple html tag/extract attribute value

What is the best way to parse html tag like that:

<a href="/Results">Results</a>

i just need to extract a href value.

I need to do this on controller.

I know i may use linq to xml for example or regex.

Any ideas what is the better way for that case?

May be there is any MVC helpers ready to go?

Basically what i need to do:

I have my extension method witch returning current url

public static string GetCurrentUrl(this ViewContext context)
        {
            string action = (string)context.Controller.ValueProvider.GetValue("action").RawValue;
            string controller = (string)context.Controller.ValueProvider.GetValue("controller").RawValue;

            if (action.ToLower() != "index")
                return String.Format("/{0}/{1}", controller, action);
            else if (action.ToLower() != "index" && controller.ToLower() != "home")
                return String.Format("/{0}", controller);
            else
                return "/";
        }

I need to compare this url with the value from a href like that <a href="{here cold be any link}">Results</a>

Upvotes: 4

Views: 5170

Answers (2)

Jason
Jason

Reputation: 15931

parsing html is notoriously difficult, there are so many hidden gotchas. The HTML Agility pack, which is a .NET HTML parsing library. Fizzler enables css selectors for html in c# and is built on top of the agility pack.

Upvotes: 0

Darin Dimitrov
Darin Dimitrov

Reputation: 1039438

Use a XML parser and avoid regex. For this specific case XDocument seems easy enough:

var doc = XDocument.Parse("<a href=\"/Results\">Results</a>");
var href = doc.Element("a").Attribute("href").Value;

For more complex scenarios when HTML specific parsing is required and manipulating the DOM you could use HTML Agility Pack.

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions