CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.nethtmlparsing
Jelly Ama
Jelly Ama

Reputation: 6931

Does .NET framework offer methods to parse an HTML string?

Knowing that I can't use HTMLAgilityPack, only straight .NET, say I have a string that contains some HTML that I need to parse and edit in such ways:

Are there methods available in .net to do so?

Upvotes: 8

Views: 11972

Answers (4)

Onur
Onur

Reputation: 599

HtmlDocument

GetElementById

HtmlElement

You can create a dummy html document.

WebBrowser w = new WebBrowser();
w.Navigate(String.Empty);
HtmlDocument doc = w.Document;
doc.Write("<html><head></head><body><img id=\"myImage\" src=\"c:\"/><a id=\"myLink\" href=\"myUrl\"/></body></html>");
Console.WriteLine(doc.Body.Children.Count);
Console.WriteLine(doc.GetElementById("myImage").GetAttribute("src"));
Console.WriteLine(doc.GetElementById("myLink").GetAttribute("href"));
Console.ReadKey();

Output:

2

file:///c:

about:myUrl

Editing elements:

HtmlElement imageElement = doc.GetElementById("myImage");
string newSource = "d:";
imageElement.OuterHtml = imageElement.OuterHtml.Replace(
        "src=\"c:\"",
        "src=\"" + newSource + "\"");
Console.WriteLine(doc.GetElementById("myImage").GetAttribute("src"));

Output:

file:///d:

Upvotes: 5

Spencer
Spencer

Reputation: 385

Aside from the HTML Agility Pack, and porting HtmlUnit over to C#, what sounds like solid solutions are:

  • Most obviously - use regex. (System.Text.RegularExpressions)
  • Using an XML Parser. (because HTML is a system of tags treat it like an XML document?)
  • Linq?

One thing I do know is that parsing HTML like XML may cause you to run into a few problems. XML and HTML are not the same. Read about it: here

Also, here is a post about Linq vs Regex.

Upvotes: 1

John
John

Reputation: 434

You can look at how HTML Agility Pack works, however, it is .Net. You can reflect the assembly and see that it is using the MFC and could be reproduced if you so wanted, but you'd be doing nothing more than moving the assembly, not making it any more .Net.

Upvotes: 0

Doug
Doug

Reputation: 29

Assuming you're dealing with well formed HTML, you could simply treat the text as an XML document. The framework is loaded with features to do exactly what you're asking.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmldocument.aspx

Upvotes: 1

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