HttpUtility.HtmlDecode driving me crazy!!!!

Question

Hi everybody!

This situation is driving me crazy!!: the following snippet does not work (as i should)

...
string preResult =  doc.DocumentNode.SelectSingleNode("//textarea[@name='utrans']").InnerText
return HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(preResult);
...

The first line assigns a value (e.g.) "<b> Dummy value: </ b> into preResult (that's expected).

BUT the next line gives AGAIN the same value!!! But it should return "<b> Dummy value: </ b>".

Debugging these lines i thought to copy and paste the value directly into HttpUtility.HtmlDecode() and guess what...it worked!!! I got the expected value!

Of course this is useless, but it proves something weird is going on...what?!!

Has anybody faced the same situation again? (dev.env. VS2008,.NET3.5SP1)

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

If the values are stored in the XML file as <b> Dummy value: </ b> then getting the InnerText will automatically HtmlDecode the text. There's no need to call HtmlDecode.

Answer 2

Use InnerHtml instead of InnerText.

This worked for me:

aDiv.InnerHtml = HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(aString);

I am using this to display the formatted text on a web page.