Remove anchor from URL in C#

Question

I'm trying to pull in an src value from an XML document, and in one that I'm testing it with, the src is:

<content src="content/Orwell - 1984 - 0451524934_split_2.html#calibre_chapter_2"/>

That creates a problem when trying to open the file. I'm not sure what that #(stuff) suffix is called, so I had no luck searching for an answer. I'd just like a simple way to remove it if possible. I suppose I could write a function to search for a # and remove anything after, but that would break if the filename contained a # symbol (or can a file even have that symbol?)

Thanks!

Answer 1

From Wikipedia:

# is used in a URL of a webpage or other resource to introduce a "fragment identifier" – an id which defines a position within that resource. For example, in the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign#Other_uses the portion after the # (Other_uses) is the fragment identifier, in this case indicating that the display should be moved to show the tag marked by ... in the HTML

Answer 2

You should be OK assuming that URLs won't contain a "#"

The character "#" is unsafe and should always be encoded because it is used in World Wide Web and in other systems to delimit a URL from a fragment/anchor identifier that might follow it.

Source (search for "#" or "unsafe").

Therefore just use String.Split() with the "#" as the split character. This should give you 2 parts. In the highly unlikely event it gives more, just discard the last one and rejoin the remainder.

Answer 3

If you had the src in a string you could use

srcstring.SubString(0,srcstring.LastIndexOf("#"));

Which would return the src without the #. If the values you are retreiving are all web urls then this should work, the # is a bookmark in a url that takes you to a specific part of the page.

Answer 4

It's not safe to remove de anchor of the url. What I mean is that ajax like sites make use of the anchor to keep track of the context. For example gmail. If you go to http://www.gmail.com/#inbox, you go directly to your inbox, but if you go to http://www.gmail.com/#all, you'll go to all your mail. The server can give a different response based on the anchor, even if the response is a file.