get div element contents in C#

Question

I have a moderately well-formatted HTML document. It is not XHTML so it's not valid XML. Given a offset of the opening tag I need to obtain contents of this tag, considering that it can have multiple nested tags inside of it.

What is the easiest way to solve this problem with a minimum amount of C# code that doesn't involve using non-standard libraries?

Answer 1

You can strip your html content using following function

public static string StripHTMLTag(string strHTML)
{
        return Regex.Replace(strHTML, "<(.|\n)*?>", "");
}

pass your content of outer tag, this will strip all html tags and provide you only content.

Hope this helps

Imran

Answer 2

I ended up writing the following function. It seems to get the job done for my purposes.

I know that it's kind of dirty, but so is the HTML code of most web-pages.

If anyone can point out principal flaws, please do so:

    private static readonly Regex rxDivTag = new Regex(
        @"<(?<close>/)?div(\s[^>]*?)?(?<selfClose>/)?>",
        RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.ExplicitCapture | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Singleline);
    private const string RXCAP_DIVTAG_CLOSE = "close";
    private const string RXCAP_DIVTAG_SELFCLOSE = "selfClose";

    private static List<string> GetProductDivs(string pageText, int start)
    {
        bool success = true;
        int curr = start + 1;
        for (Match matchNextTag = rxDivTag.Match(pageText, curr) ; depth > 0 ; matchNextTag = rxDivTag.Match(pageText, curr))
        {
            if (matchNextTag == Match.Empty)
            {
                success = false;
                break;
            }

            if (matchNextTag.Groups[RXCAP_DIVTAG_CLOSE].Success)
            {
                if (matchNextTag.Groups[RXCAP_DIVTAG_SELFCLOSE].Success)
                {
                    success = false;
                    break;
                }

                --depth;
            }
            else if (!matchNextTag.Groups[RXCAP_DIVTAG_SELFCLOSE].Success)
            {
                ++depth;
            }

            curr = matchNextTag.Index + matchNextTag.Length;
        }

        if (success)
        {
            return pageText.Substring(start, curr - start);
        }
        else
        {
            return null;
        }
    }