ASP.NET: How to extract a specific value from a table html source?

Question

I want to extract the movie name of each row in the IMDb`s Boxoffice table..

example html table row:

    <tr class="chart_even_row">

  <td style="text-align: right;">
      <b>1</b>
  </td>
  <td>
      <img border="0" src="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjA4NDg3NzYxMF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNTgyNzkyNw@@._V1._SY30_SX23_.jpg" width="20" height="30">
  </td>
  <td>

<a  href="/title/tt1392170/" >The Hunger Games</a> (2012)
  </td>
  <td style="text-align: right; padding-right: 20px;">$155M
  </td>
  <td style="text-align: right;">
$155M
  </td>
  <td style="text-align: center;">
1
  </td>

</tr>

The value I want to extract is "The Hunger Games"..

I need a C# code that would achieve this for me..

NOTE: I want to do this via REGEX

Thanks in advance, Rashad.

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

1

Screen scraping the IMDB is complicated, fragile, and forbidden. The IMDB provides plain-text data files you can use instead at http://www.imdb.com/interfaces

Update

Allow me to reiterate: screen scraping and data mining IMDB.com is in violation of their terms of use.

Regarding Regex: see this answer.

So if you're dead-set on doing this in violation of the IMDB's terms of use, the HTML Agility Pack is probably the best way to go.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

1
1

answered Mar 26 '12 at 14:33

StriplingWarrior

151,543
27
246
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I download the source of the box office top ten then.. its not avaliable there – Rashad Ahmad Mar 26 '12 at 14:38

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 26 '12 at 14:34

0

try to copy paste the code in single html file. if you have too many pages to fetch then try to write code that will read them through html agility pack.

You can find html agility pack here http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/

answered Mar 26 '12 at 14:34

Chinook

385
4
13

Thanks, but can I extract the values using Regex ? – Rashad Ahmad Mar 26 '12 at 14:36
Ok, You can find how to use them http://stackoverflow.com/questions/846994/how-to-use-html-agility-pack – Chinook Mar 26 '12 at 14:37
html agility pack use same thing known as XPath support http://socialebola.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/xpath-support-for-the-html-agility-pack-on-windows-phone/ – Chinook Mar 26 '12 at 14:40
Okay,, but can i do it via Regex, because I have seen an IMDB API solution used Regex to extract values from html source? – Rashad Ahmad Mar 26 '12 at 14:43
I am not sure, I use XPath when I need to use them last time. – Chinook Mar 27 '12 at 11:11

ASP.NET: How to extract a specific value from a table html source?

2 Answers2

Update