Unreadable website source

Question

I'm trying to use C# to download the source of this website http://www.dotnetperls.com/net and do some parsing. I'm using this function:

WebClient client = new WebClient();
string website = client.DownloadString("http://www.dotnetperls.com/net");

The code I'm getting is unreadable though, here's an excerpt of it:

‹     „VoŰ8ý*Ü5Řţ!;q6UlárŰt ×öę ÷7%Ž,n(R%)˙XĂßý†¤ĺH¶€  IĎ{3śyCRYüÂTf÷Â–"YśF ,Y»0ľÔpŔ%Ők.ăÜLŁjG¦3>V»‡\(jcÍ×…}HiöşÖŞ–lT)Ă-W2¶Ş"W¨†
ĐKŞÓę8‡-g¶góŕ<âéGüq”
vŰÂf‘ÇXÝ´°Ű;ŹU

I checked the website source in firefox and it seems just fine. What am I doing wrong?

Try setting automatic decompression of `HttpWebRequest` class as mentioned in [http://stackoverflow.com/a/4567408/969278](http://stackoverflow.com/a/4567408/969278) — Halis S., Aug 14 '15 at 13:50
As @hellowstone said, it is probably gzip compressed, and the web client doesn't decompress it automatically. — Darxis, Aug 14 '15 at 15:33

Sirwan Afifi · Answer 1 · 2015-08-14T13:09:49.193

2

You should use web client encoding before calling DownloadString:

using(WebClient webClient = new WebClient())
{
   webClient.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8;
   string s = webClient.DownloadString("http://www.dotnetperls.com/net");
}

edited Aug 14 '15 at 13:09

answered Aug 14 '15 at 13:03

Sirwan Afifi

10,654
14
63
110

Doesn't seem to work for me, I'm going to try different encodings and see if those do. – Marcin Aug 14 '15 at 13:09
None of the encodings did the trick, I don't know if it's just me or the website.. Did you try to run this code by any chance? – Marcin Aug 14 '15 at 13:17
1

Yes, I have tested the code before answer your question. you can just set a break point and see `s` in HTML visualizer – Sirwan Afifi Aug 14 '15 at 13:18
What do you mean by `s` ? – Marcin Aug 14 '15 at 13:23
the variable `string s = webClient.DownloadString("http://www.dotnetperls.com/net");` – Sirwan Afifi Aug 14 '15 at 13:24
Well, the value of `s` in my HTML visualizer in UTF8 encoding is `�`. Guess there's something very wrong with my pc then, thanks anyways. – Marcin Aug 14 '15 at 13:29

Unreadable website source

1 Answers1