Can I use Html Agility Pack to make the output look nicely indented, unnecessary white space stripped?
+1
A:
A variation of this question has been answered recently
Basically the outcome of this was that while you can use HtmlAgilityPack to clean it up a bit by using the fix nested tags.
The best solution is to use something called Tidy which is an application that was originally created by some developers at w3c and then made open source. Its the engine that powers the w3c validator as well.
This article covers how to use it but you had to sign up (free) to view it:
It seems like a legit article but its funny because nobody else seems to have covered this topic in the last six years...
rtpHarry
2010-04-09 20:55:18
I read the above post (before asking actually), and tried it out. While this fixes nested tags (and in my case foobared it too, meaning that the input was valid, when the output wasn't), it does not make the code look nice (and thus easy to debug). It seems that with html agility pack, my only option is to read the html in and then reconstruct the entire document - which seems a bit heavy weight to me...I'll have a look at the tidy article once I can get myself to register at devx (why the hell do they require this? - this is *so* 90ies!!!)
Jan Limpens
2010-04-10 13:22:07
yeah registration is strange - I initially passed on it but before posting my answer I decided it was no good saying "this article probably works I didnt sign up". Sign up was quick and easy tho!
rtpHarry
2010-04-12 22:51:23
+1
A:
HAP is not going to give you the results you are after.
Try using a .net wrapper for HtmlTidy such as the one found here
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using Mark.Tidy;
namespace CleanupHtml
{
/// <summary>
/// http://markbeaton.com/SoftwareInfo.aspx?ID=81a0ecd0-c41c-48da-8a39-f10c8aa3f931
/// </summary>
internal class Program
{
private static void Main(string[] args)
{
string html =
new WebClient().DownloadString(
"http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2593147/html-agility-pack-make-code-look-neat/2610903#2610903");
using (Document doc = new Document(html))
{
doc.ShowWarnings = false;
doc.Quiet = true;
doc.OutputXhtml = true;
doc.OutputXml = true;
doc.IndentBlockElements = AutoBool.Yes;
doc.IndentAttributes = false;
doc.IndentCdata = true;
doc.AddVerticalSpace = false;
doc.WrapAt = 120;
doc.CleanAndRepair();
string output = doc.Save();
Console.WriteLine(output);
File.WriteAllText("output.htm", output);
}
}
}
}
Results:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
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<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 14 October 2008), see www.w3.org" />
<title>
Html Agility Pack: make code look neat - Stack Overflow
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Can I use Html Agility Pack to make the output look nicely indented, unnecessary white space
stripped?
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asked <span title="2010-04-07 14:13:47Z" class="relativetime">2 days ago</span>
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what output? From where? some more details perhaps? – <a href=
"/users/97614/sam-holder" title="1868" class="comment-user">Sam Holder</a> <span class=
"comment-date"><span title="2010-04-07 14:16:41Z">2 days ago</span></span>
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<i>(reference)</i> <a href="http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/Wikipage" rel=
"nofollow">htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/Wikipage</a> – <a href=
"/users/208809/gordon" title="16497" class="comment-user">Gordon</a> <span class=
"comment-date"><span title="2010-04-07 14:16:55Z">2 days ago</span></span>
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output = html code output – <a href="/users/51795/illdev" title="53" class=
"comment-user owner">illdev</a> <span class="comment-date"><span title=
"2010-04-10 13:14:42Z">12 secs ago</span></span>
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<p>
A variation of this question has been answered recently
</p>
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<li>
<a href=
"http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2490765/which-is-the-best-html-tidy-pack-is-there-any-option-in-html-agility-pack-to-mak/2507673#2507673">
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2490765/which-is-the-best-html-tidy-pack-is-there-any-option-in-html-agility-pack-to-mak/2507673#2507673</a>
</li>
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<p>
Basically the outcome of this was that while you <strong>can</strong> use HtmlAgilityPack to
clean it up a bit by using the fix nested tags.
</p>
<p>
The best solution is to use something called Tidy which is an application that was originally
created by some developers at w3c and then made open source. Its the engine that powers the w3c
validator as well.
</p>
<p>
This article covers how to use it but you had to sign up (free) to view it:
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<a href="http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/20505/1763/" rel=
"nofollow">http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/20505/1763/</a>
</li>
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<p>
It seems like a legit article but its funny because nobody else seems to have covered this
topic in the last six years...
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answered <span title="2010-04-09 20:55:18Z" class="relativetime">16 hours ago</span>
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<p>
Output as XHTML and run that through an <a href=
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Sky Sanders
2010-04-09 21:02:34
looks cool!That's from the devx article? - otherwise what is the Document class?
Jan Limpens
2010-04-10 13:26:52
@illdev - no, not that I know of, is just a lib that I have used in the past. Document is part of the Mark.Tidy lib. Is the Tidy wrapper.
Sky Sanders
2010-04-10 13:30:55
Didn't know that one, looks nice! Did you use it somewhere more extensively - is it heavy?
Jan Limpens
2010-04-11 00:41:15
I have used Raget's HtmlTidy for many years, which is an c lib, this is just a managed wrapper. All in all I would say that it is fast, lean and will probably get you where you need to go.
Sky Sanders
2010-04-11 01:13:23