What's the best way to strip a href from a fragment of html code?

Question

I have the following fragment of html:

<p><a href=\"/es-es/Documents/test.txt\"><img class=\"ms-asset-icon ms-rtePosition-4\" src=\"/_layouts/15/images/ictxt.gif\" alt=\"\" />test.txt</a><a href=\"/es-es/Documents/test%20-%20Copy.txt\"><img width=\"16\" height=\"16\" class=\"ms-asset-icon ms-rtePosition-4\" src=\"/_layouts/15/images/ictxt.gif\" alt=\"\" />test - Copy.txt</a><a href=\"/es-es/Documents/test%20-%20Copy%20(2).txt\"><img width=\"16\" height=\"16\" class=\"ms-asset-icon ms-rtePosition-4\" src=\"/_layouts/15/images/ictxt.gif\" alt=\"\" />test - Copy (2).txt</a></p>

This html is in a string. I need to strip out the hrefs from all the links and am not sure how to go about this.

NOTE: I left the string as is that's why its not formatted on multiple lines of code...

Define "best". Easy to implement? Best run-time performance? — Eric J., Oct 24 '13 at 18:41
best overall method, this being good run time performance and easy to implement... — Orlando, Oct 24 '13 at 18:43
just `href` or also `src`? HtmlAgilityPack may be the answer you're digging for after all is said and done. — Tetsujin no Oni, Oct 24 '13 at 18:43
@DavidThielen: To quote famously: http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/93922 — Tetsujin no Oni, Oct 24 '13 at 18:46
From what ive read its not good to use regular expressions on html any input on that? — Orlando, Oct 24 '13 at 18:46
Regex or HtmlAgilityPack are not required you can pretty much manipulate it with XML. Check out my answer — Sriram Sakthivel, Oct 24 '13 at 18:56
@TetsujinnoOni For grabbing the href= part, I think it would work fine there. I do agree that for anything more, regular expressions tend to not work well with html. — David Thielen, Oct 24 '13 at 20:33
"good run time performance and easy to implement" is sometimes like saying "I want a race car that seats 6 and has room for skiis". — Eric J., Oct 25 '13 at 07:56

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 24 '13 at 18:48

HtmlAgilityPack is the most recommended tool to parse and manipulate HTML.

Some starting code would look like following (more samples are one search away):

var htmlDoc = new HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument();
htmlDoc.LoadHtml(htmlString);  
var aNodesWithHref = htmlDoc.DocumentNode.SelectNode("//a[@href]");

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 24 '13 at 18:51

1

Try this. You could easily achieve the expected result using XML manipulation.

string s = "<p><a href=\"/es-es/Documents/test.txt\"><img class=\"ms-asset-icon ms-rtePosition-4\" src=\"/_layouts/15/images/ictxt.gif\" alt=\"\" />test.txt</a><a href=\"/es-es/Documents/test%20-%20Copy.txt\"><img width=\"16\" height=\"16\" class=\"ms-asset-icon ms-rtePosition-4\" src=\"/_layouts/15/images/ictxt.gif\" alt=\"\" />test - Copy.txt</a><a href=\"/es-es/Documents/test%20-%20Copy%20(2).txt\"><img width=\"16\" height=\"16\" class=\"ms-asset-icon ms-rtePosition-4\" src=\"/_layouts/15/images/ictxt.gif\" alt=\"\" />test - Copy (2).txt</a></p>";
var xdoc = XDocument.Parse(s);
            xdoc.Descendants("a")
            .Attributes("href")
            .Remove();
        Console.WriteLine(xdoc.ToString());

answered Oct 24 '13 at 18:51

Sriram Sakthivel

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Since I wanted to get the hrefs not remove them I used this portion of the code: var xdoc = XDocument.Parse(s).Descendants("a").Attributes("href"); – Orlando Oct 24 '13 at 19:33
Since the `img` tags are XHtml this should be fine. If your input can't be guaranteed to be an XHtml fragment, this is not a generalizeable answer as HTML `img` tags aren't self-closed. (Nor many others). – Tetsujin no Oni Oct 25 '13 at 17:39
@TetsujinnoOni Of course, but I concentrated to solve specific problem to OP not a generalized answer which you can use anywhere though it works for well formatted xml – Sriram Sakthivel Oct 25 '13 at 18:33
Of course; I'm mainly concerned in the comments here with those who find the question in the future. – Tetsujin no Oni Oct 25 '13 at 19:16

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 24 '13 at 18:43

0

You could use the AttributeCollection.Remove method

YourLink.Attributes.Remove("href");

answered Oct 24 '13 at 18:43

Kristian

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That'd be great if it wasn't in a raw string. – Tetsujin no Oni Oct 24 '13 at 18:44
ya, but shouldn't he be required to extract the link and store it in a variable before doing any subsequent steps? i mean, the alternative is to start regexing strings, and we all know how elegant that is... – Kristian Oct 24 '13 at 18:45

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 24 '13 at 18:47

0

can you just replace it with Regex?

string newString = Regex.Replace(oldString, @"<a href[^>]+>", @"");

answered Oct 24 '13 at 18:47

Jonesopolis

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What's the best way to strip a href from a fragment of html code?

4 Answers4