tags:

views:

989

answers:

7
+2  Q: 

C# RegEx - find html tags (div and anchor)

Hi

I have to retrieve several div section (of specific class name "row ") with it's content, and additionally find all anchor tags (link urls) (with class "underline red bold"). Shortly speaing : get section of:

<div class = "row ">
 ... (divs, tags ...)
<a class="underline red bold" href="/searchClickThru?pid=prod56534895&amp;q=&amp;rpos=109181&amp;rpp=10&amp;_dyncharset=UTF-8&amp;sort=&amp;url=/culture-and-gender-intimate-relation-ksiazka,prod56534895,p">

and collections of urls

string[] urls = {"/searchClickThru?pid=prod56534895&amp;q=&amp;rpos=109181&amp;rpp=10&amp;_dyncharset=UTF-8&amp;sort=&amp;url=/culture-and-gender-intimate-relation-ksiazka,prod56534895,p"}

the entire page looks like that:

<html>

... a lot of stuff

<div class="row ">

  <div class="photo">
    <a rel="nofollow" href="/searchClickThru?pid=prod56534895&amp;q=&amp;rpos=109181&amp;rpp=10&amp;_dyncharset=UTF-8&amp;sort=&amp;url=/culture-and-gender-intimate-relation-ksiazka,prod56534895,p">
      <img alt="alt msg" src="/b/s/b9/03/b9038292d147a582add07ee1f0607827.jpg">                 
 </a>
  </div>

  <div class="desc">
    <div class="l1">
      <div class="icons">
      </div>

      <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
        <tbody>
          <tr>
            <td>
              <div class="fleft">
                <a class="underline red bold" href="/searchClickThru?pid=prod56534895&amp;q=&amp;rpos=109181&amp;rpp=10&amp;_dyncharset=UTF-8&amp;sort=&amp;url=/culture-and-gender-intimate-relation-ksiazka,prod56534895,p">
                  Culture And Gender   <br>Intimate Relation</a>
              </div>

              <div class="fleft">

              </div>
            </td>
          </tr>
        </tbody>
      </table>
    </div>
    <div class="l2">

      <div>
      </div>
      <div>
        <div class="but">
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="l3">
      Long description
      <a class="underlinepix_red no_wrap" rel="nofollow" href="/searchClickThru?pid=prod56534895&amp;q=&amp;rpos=109181&amp;rpp=10&amp;_dyncharset=UTF-8&amp;sort=&amp;url=/culture-and-gender-intimate-relation-ksiazka,prod56534895,p">
        more<img alt="" src="/b/img/arr_red_sm.gif">
  </a>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="omit"></div>

<div class="row ">

  <div class="photo">
    <a rel="nofollow" href="/searchClickThru?pid=prod56534895&amp;q=&amp;rpos=109181&amp;rpp=10&amp;_dyncharset=UTF-8&amp;sort=&amp;url=/culture-and-gender-intimate-relation-ksiazka,prod56534899,p">
      <img alt="alt msg" src="/b/s/b9/03/b9038292d147a582add07ee1f06078222.jpg">                    
 </a>
  </div>

  <div class="desc">
    <div class="l1">
      <div class="icons">
      </div>

      <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
        <tbody>
          <tr>
            <td>
              <div class="fleft">
                <a class="underline red bold" href="/searchClickThru?pid=prod56534895&amp;q=&amp;rpos=109181&amp;rpp=10&amp;_dyncharset=UTF-8&amp;sort=&amp;url=/culture-and-gender-intimate-relation-ksiazka,prod5653489225,p">
                  Culture And Gender   <br>Intimate Relation</a>
              </div>

              <div class="fleft">

              </div>
            </td>
          </tr>
        </tbody>
      </table>
    </div>
    <div class="l2">

      <div>
      </div>
      <div>
        <div class="but">
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
    <div class="l3">
      Long description
      <a class="underlinepix_red no_wrap" rel="nofollow" href="/searchClickThru?pid=prod56534895&amp;q=&amp;rpos=109181&amp;rpp=10&amp;_dyncharset=UTF-8&amp;sort=&amp;url=/culture-and-gender-intimate-relation-ksiazka,prod56534895,p">
        more<img alt="" src="/b/img/arr_red_sm.gif">
  </a>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Can anybody help me to create suitable reg ex?

+14  A: 

Regular expressions are not well suited for this.

Due to the nested nature of HTML, a regular expression that does what you ask would be very (very very) long and complicated. Use a HTML Parser instead.

Jens  2010-04-06 14:04:09
+1 and by 'a HTML Parser', Jens means HTML Agility Pack and nothing else, ever, for any C# html parsing needs: http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/Wikipage
David Hedlund  2010-04-06 14:06:10
Obligatory link: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454
Jeff Yates  2010-04-06 14:09:18
It is a little sad that this is my highest voted answer so far.. =)
Jens  2010-04-06 15:25:52
Take your victories where you can get them, my friend... ;-)
Pretzel  2010-04-06 15:34:33
+1  A: 

The answer to this question is roughly the same as the answer to this question:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454

GWLlosa  2010-04-06 14:06:03
A: 

Just so you know questions about regular expressions for html go down like a lead baloon at stackoverflow... as they should ;)

BritishDeveloper  2010-04-06 14:07:46
This should have been a comment, not an answer!
Sinan Ünür  2010-04-06 14:08:57
A: 

Check out the HTML Agility Pack

This is an agile HTML parser that builds a read/write DOM and supports plain XPATH or XSLT (you actually don't HAVE to understand XPATH nor XSLT to use it, don't worry...). It is a .NET code library that allows you to parse "out of the web" HTML files. The parser is very tolerant with "real world" malformed HTML. The object model is very similar to what proposes System.Xml, but for HTML documents (or streams).

Matthew Vines  2010-04-06 14:08:54
A: 

Is it NECESSARY to use regular expressions? If not, then why don't you use an HTML parser like Html Agility Pack... it will be MUCH easier to get what you want if you use a parser instead of regular expressions.

Lirik  2010-04-06 14:09:24
+1  A: 

Alternatively, if you've managed to get into LINQ and like the power of LINQ, there appears to be a LINQ-to-HTML Library available for download. I haven't tried it yet, so I cannot speak to its ability.

Pretzel  2010-04-06 14:11:08
A: 

Thanks for short answer. I think html parsers suits better for me.

Have you any opinion (performance/ easy of use) about Html Agility Pack and LINQ to HTML(justAgile)? Which one do you prefer?

czesio  2010-04-06 14:39:13

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