Removing html tag from a string and adding a new line

Question

I am using regex to remove html tags from my string

Air Receiver <br /> Pressure Washer <br />Vehicle Lift<br />100T Crane Attachment<br />

which is working well.

ViewBag.PlantDetails =
    Regex.Replace(QuoteDetails.PlantDetails, @"<[^>]+>|&nbsp;", " ").Trim();

which returns the following string -

Air Receiver Pressure Washer Vehicle Lift 100T Crane Attachment

My question is, is there a way to add a new line to the string so that it shows like below?

Air Receiver
Pressure Washer
Vehicle Lift
100T Crane Attachment

Please don't try to parse HTML with regex. Use an HTML parser instead. — gunr2171, Jul 27 '22 at 15:21
_"is there a way to add a new line"_ - yes: Instead of replace by " " replace by [`Environment.NewLine`](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.environment.newline?view=net-6.0) — Fildor, Jul 27 '22 at 15:25
But to reiterate @gunr2171's point: Only do this if `
` will be the only tag you encounter here. If it's html, use html tools. — Fildor, Jul 27 '22 at 15:27
To add to @gunr2171 's comment, see [this very relevant post](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/14868997) — Charlieface, Jul 27 '22 at 15:44

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 27 '22 at 15:36

So if <br />, and exactly that (with the space and everything) is the only HTML tag that you'll encounter, then Regex is overkill. Use a simple string replace.

var input = "Air Receiver <br /> Pressure Washer <br />Vehicle Lift<br />100T Crane Attachment<br />";
var output = input.Replace("<br />", Environment.NewLine);

In your example, you have spaces sometimes on either end of the break, so trim it if you want.

output = string.Join(Environment.NewLine, output.Split(Environment.NewLine).Select(x => x.Trim()));

If you really want to use Regex, it can be used to match the break and surrounding whitespace.

var output = Regex.Replace(input, @"\s*<br \/>\s*", Environment.NewLine);

Removing html tag from a string and adding a new line

1 Answers1