ASP.NET MVC 3 Parse simple html tag/extract attribute value

Question

What is the best way to parse html tag like that:

<a href="/Results">Results</a>

i just need to extract a href value.

I need to do this on controller.

I know i may use linq to xml for example or regex.

Any ideas what is the better way for that case?

May be there is any MVC helpers ready to go?

Basically what i need to do:

I have my extension method witch returning current url

public static string GetCurrentUrl(this ViewContext context)
        {
            string action = (string)context.Controller.ValueProvider.GetValue("action").RawValue;
            string controller = (string)context.Controller.ValueProvider.GetValue("controller").RawValue;

            if (action.ToLower() != "index")
                return String.Format("/{0}/{1}", controller, action);
            else if (action.ToLower() != "index" && controller.ToLower() != "home")
                return String.Format("/{0}", controller);
            else
                return "/";
        }

I need to compare this url with the value from a href like that <a href="{here cold be any link}">Results</a>

Darin Dimitrov · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-14 15:59:22Z

4

Use a XML parser and avoid regex. For this specific case XDocument seems easy enough:

var doc = XDocument.Parse("<a href=\"/Results\">Results</a>");
var href = doc.Element("a").Attribute("href").Value;

For more complex scenarios when HTML specific parsing is required and manipulating the DOM you could use HTML Agility Pack.

answered May 14, 2011 at 15:59

Darin Dimitrov

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4 Comments

Joper Over a year ago

is it would be right way(answer for that question) stackoverflow.com/questions/2119699/…

Joper Over a year ago

I need to do this only once and wouldn't reference HTML Agility Pack just for that simple small thing.

Darin Dimitrov Over a year ago

@Joper, no, the accepted answer isn't the best way for me. It is the comment this this answer which doesn't involve any regex the correct way.

Shimmy Weitzhandler Over a year ago

@DarinDimitrov is it safe to use an XML parser for HTML? Since HTML is not compliant to XML, for instance the disabled attribute, or unclosed <input>, <hr>, and <p> etc. elements?

Jason · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-14 16:05:38Z

0

parsing html is notoriously difficult, there are so many hidden gotchas. The HTML Agility pack, which is a .NET HTML parsing library. Fizzler enables css selectors for html in c# and is built on top of the agility pack.

answered May 14, 2011 at 16:05

Jason

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