C# HTML Tag parsing through REGEX

Question

<p style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">My name is Faysal </p>

I want to parse only the String "My name is Faysal". I've written the following snippets,but it returns nothing. What should I need to modify?

 WebClient web = new WebClient();
        String html = web.DownloadString("http://www.dmp.gov.bd/application/index/pressdetails/press_159");


        MatchCollection m1 = Regex.Matches(html, "<p style=\"color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;\">\\s*(.+?)\\s*</p>", RegexOptions.Singleline);


        foreach (Match m in m1) {
            String head = m.Groups[1].Value;

            Console.WriteLine(head);
        }

[Wouldn't you prefer a nice HTML parser instead?](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/102937) — Robert Harvey, Dec 12 '13 at 21:06
@RobertHarvey Yeah, I was about to propose HTML Agility Pack http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/ — Francis Ducharme, Dec 12 '13 at 21:07
I know it can be done through HTML Agility Pack. but I want to make this code work anyhow. — Faysal Ahmed, Dec 12 '13 at 21:17
Yeah, I know how you feel. Most people feel that cars are the best highway vehicles, but I wanted to be the first to traverse the Mass Pike with a yacht. (To be honest, I understand that feeling that "I'm 99% there anyway" - but as someone who's tried, trust me - HTML will always throw a formatting curveball at you.) — Katana314, Dec 12 '13 at 21:58

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

You can't parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can't be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML.

retrieved from "RegEx match open tags"...

I hope you will learn just like I did a long time ago. You can NOT parse HTML using RegEx. It is more efficient to use a parser built for HTML.

If your page is in XML or XHTML, you can use the built-in parsing libraries.
For example, System.Xml.XmlDocument.
If it is pure HTML, use HtmlAgilityPack, or another similar parser.

What I would do in your case, is select the first p element, that has the style attribute set to the "whatever".

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No, please don't look down here!

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Excuse me mods, if this answer is too long.

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What you see below is UGLY, and NOT RECOMMENDED! I BEG OF YOU, DON'T LOOK!

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"lea͠ki̧n͘g fr̶ǫm ̡yo͟ur eye͢s̸ ̛l̕ik͏e liquid pain, the song of re̸gular expression parsing will extinguish the voices of mortal man from the sphere I can see it can you see ̲͚̖͔̙î̩́t̲͎̩̱͔́̋̀ it is beautiful the final snuffing of the lies of Man ALL IS LOŚ͖̩͇̗̪̏̈́T ALL IS LOST the pon̷y he comes he c̶̮omes he comes the ichor permeates all MY FACE MY FACE ᵒh god no NO NOO̼OO NΘ stop the an*̶͑̾̾̅ͫ͏̙̤g͇̫͛͆̾ͫ̑͆l͖͉̗̩̳̟̍ͫͥͨe̠̅s ͎a̧͈͖r̽̾̈́͒͑e not rè̑ͧ̌aͨl̘̝̙̃ͤ͂̾̆ ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂҉̯͈͕̹̘̱ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚N̐Y̡ H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ "

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If you absolutely have your heart set on using RegEx (kill me for saying this), then try the following expression.

<p style=\"color: rgb\(34, 34, 34\); font-family: Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;\">\s*(.+?)\s*</p>

It's the same, except the parentheses around "rgb" are escaped. And I changed "\s" to "\s"

Edit

If it helps, I viewed the HTML from that website, and I could not find "My name is Faysal".

C# HTML Tag parsing through REGEX

1 Answers1

No, please don't look down here!

Edit