Regex to get the table with cell containing specific innerHTML

Question

Image this table:

<table cellpadding="0" border="0">
<tr class="someclass">

<td>blah blah THISISIMPORTANT blah blah</td>

</tr>
</table>

I want to select only the tables that have TDs with the innerHTML that contains 'THISISIMPORTANT'.

This must be done with regular expressions in c#

this is what i have tried:

<table\s*.*?\s*>\s*.*?\s*<td\s*.*?\s*>\s*.*?\s*</td>\s*.*?\s*</table>

dear @MaxDataSol if you know a better way other than regex I would be really glad. — Ashkan Mobayen Khiabani, Sep 01 '12 at 00:23
You can use jquery and write your results in a hidden field that you can then read code behind — MaxDataSol, Sep 01 '12 at 00:25
Have you seen this question? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/590747/using-regular-expressions-to-parse-html-why-not — Brad, Sep 01 '12 at 00:26
as i told i can't use any parser as the web hosting don't let me use any components — Ashkan Mobayen Khiabani, Sep 01 '12 at 00:30
@AshkanMobayenKhiabani Find a better web host. Seriously. If you can't drop a DLL in the `/bin` dir of your ASP.NET site, your web host is *useless*. No installation is necessary for .NET assemblies. Not allowing ANY assemblies will seriously hamper your ability to develop .NET apps. — Andrew Barber, Sep 01 '12 at 06:06

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 01 '12 at 00:39

2

/<table[^>]*>(?:.(?!<\/table>))*<td[^>]*>(?:.(?!<\/td>))*THISISIMPORTANT.*?<\/td>.*?<\/table>/

That's close... I mean, so long as no one uses a ">" inside a tag, you're fine. But you really should find a better way to do it than regex.

answered Sep 01 '12 at 00:39

FrankieTheKneeMan

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score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

0

Why not just use the HTML Agility Pack? It parses HTML really well and even supports LINQ, so it should be trivial to implement what you want with it.

You could parse the text you want with a regular expression, but then you'll need to assume will always be perfectly formed and in the same specific format, etc., which will make the code difficult to maintain.

EDIT : I found another question which is nearly identical to yours, with a code sample showing how to use HTML agility pack to implement a solution: regex to get value of inside a particular TD in HTML

edited May 23 '17 at 12:14

Community

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answered Sep 01 '12 at 00:25

Jack P.

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I'm developing an asp.net page and i can't use any dll files (other than the .net framework itself) the web hosting forbided use of dll files – Ashkan Mobayen Khiabani Sep 01 '12 at 00:28
1

@AshkanMobayenKhiabani Find a better web host. Seriously. If you can't drop a DLL in the `/bin` dir of your ASP.NET site, your web host is *useless*. – Andrew Barber Sep 01 '12 at 06:05

Regex to get the table with cell containing specific innerHTML

2 Answers2