Find and replace text inside xml document using regular expression

Question

I am using c# console app to get xml document. Now once xmldocument is loaded i want to search for specific href tag:

href="/abc/def

inside the xml document.

once that node is found i want to strip tag completly and just show Hello.

<a href="/abc/def">Hello</a>

I think i can simply get the tag using regex. But can anyone please tell me how can i remove the href tag completly using regex?

using regex for this kind of stuff is a bad idea IMHO - if you are dealing with HTML then I would recommend using HTML Agility pack... — Yahia, Mar 30 '12 at 19:38
possible duplicate of [Using C# Regular expression to replace XML element content](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448376/using-c-sharp-regular-expression-to-replace-xml-element-content) — Ken White, Mar 30 '12 at 19:41
@KenWhite - that is totally different question i looked at it. But no help for my question. — NoviceMe, Mar 30 '12 at 19:43
@Yahia - It is not html i am loading the xml file in xml document and want to find that particular link and remove — NoviceMe, Mar 30 '12 at 19:44
@NoviceMe, if you can show your xml, I guess you can get better answers — L.B, Mar 30 '12 at 19:48
@NoviceMe there is no link in XML, what you have shown is HTML... — Yahia, Mar 30 '12 at 20:05

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 30 '12 at 20:24

xml & html same difference: tagged content. xml is stricter in it's formatting. for this use case I would use transformations and xpath queries rebuild the document. As @Yahia stated, regex on tagged documents is typically a bad idea. the regex for parsing is far to complex to be affective as a generic solution.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 30 '12 at 20:28

0

The most popular technology for similar tasks is called XPath. (It is also a key component of XQuery and XSLT.) Would the following perhaps solve your task, too?

root.SelectSingleNode("//a[@href='/abc/def']").InnerText = "Hello";

answered Mar 30 '12 at 20:28

Jirka Hanika

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 30 '12 at 20:37

You could try

string x = @"<?xml version='1.0'?> 
 <EXAMPLE>  
    <a href='/abc/def'>Hello</a> 
 </EXAMPLE>";

 System.Xml.XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
 doc.LoadXml(x);
 XmlNode n = doc.SelectSingleNode("//a[@href='/abc/def']");
 XmlNode p = n.ParentNode;
 p.RemoveChild(n);
 System.Xml.XmlNode newNode = doc.CreateNode("element", "a", "");
 newNode.InnerXml = "Hello";
 p.AppendChild(newNode);

Not really sure if this is what you are trying to do but it should be enough to get you headed in right direction.

Find and replace text inside xml document using regular expression

3 Answers3