Parse inner HTML

Question

This is what I want to parse

<div class="photoBox pB-ms">
<a href="/user_details?userid=ePDZ9HuMGWR7vs3kLfj3Gg">
<img width="100" height="100" alt="Photo of Debbie K." src="http://s3-media2.px.yelpcdn.com/photo/xZab5rpdueTCJJuUiBlauA/ms.jpg">
</a>
</div>

I am using following XPath to find it

HtmlNodeCollection bodyNode = htmlDoc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//div[@class='photoBox pB-ms']");

This is fine and return,s me all div,s with photobox class

But when I want to get ahref using

HtmlNodeCollection bodyNode = htmlDoc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//div[@class='photoBox pB-ms'//a href]");

I got error invalid token.

Also I tried using query

   var lowestreview =
  from main in htmlDoc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//div[@class='photoBox pB-ms']") 
   from rating in main.SelectNodes("//a href")
  select new { Main=main.Attributes[0].Value,AHref = rating.ToString() };

Will anybody tell me how to write XPath or query to get this AHref

BrokenGlass · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-27T03:10:15.910

This works (tested):

HtmlNodeCollection bodyNodes = htmlDoc.DocumentNode
                                      .SelectNodes("//div[@class='photoBox pB-ms']/a[@href]");
foreach(var node in bodyNodes)
{
    string href = node.Attributes["href"].Value;
}

The problem is that you had attribute and element selectors mixed up. Also from you question its unclear whether you really intended to query for a collection.

The XPath selector above will select all a elements that have an href attribute that are child nodes of a div element with a class of 'photoBox pB-ms'. You can then iterate this collection and get the href attribute value of each element.

Also HtmlAgilityPack now supports Linq (since 1.4), so just getting a particular attribute value could be done much easier (imo) like this:

string hrefValue = htmlDoc.DocumentNode
                          .Descendants("div")
                          .Where(x => x.Attributes["class"].Value == "photoBox pB-ms")
                          .Select(x => x.Element("a").Attributes["href"].Value)
                          .FirstOrDefault();

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 27 '11 at 02:52

1

Instead of XML Parsing you can use HTMLAgilePack

HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
doc.LoadHtml([HTML Text]);
foreach(HtmlNode link in doc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//a[@href"])
{
    HtmlAttribute att = link["href"];
    // att.Value
}

answered Jul 27 '11 at 02:52

Peyman

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What? He _is_ using the HTML _Agility_ Pack... incorrectly however. – Jeff Mercado Jul 28 '11 at 05:27
@Jeff: Could you tell me what's problem? – Peyman Jul 28 '11 at 05:29
Don't get me wrong, your code is fine. It's just that you're suggesting that he's using the XML parser. But he is in fact using the HTML Agility Pack. His XPath's were incorrect, that's all. – Jeff Mercado Jul 28 '11 at 05:40

Parse inner HTML

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