Question

I have html tables in one webpage like 

<table border=1>
    <tr><td>sno</td><td>sname</td></tr>
    <tr><td>111</td><td>abcde</td></tr>
    <tr><td>213</td><td>ejkll</td></tr>
</table>

<table border=1>
    <tr><td>adress</td><td>phoneno</td><td>note</td></tr>
    <tr><td>asdlkj</td><td>121510</td><td>none</td></tr>
    <tr><td>asdlkj</td><td>214545</td><td>none</td></tr>
</table>

Now from this webpage using html agility pack I want to extract the data of the column address and phone no only. It means for that I have find first in which table there is column address and phoneno.After finding that table I want to extract the data of that column address and phoneno what should I do ?

I can get the table. But after that what should I do don't understand.

And other thing : is feasible that we can extract data from the table through column name.

Was it helpful?

Solution

Here are some helper methods to help you parse HTML tables to DataTable instances. You can just iterate through the resulting DataTable array to find the one containing the columns you want. The code is coupled with the format of the tables in the HTML, in this case it obtains column information from the first row (<tr>). Also note that no error checking is performed, so this will break will tables that do not follow the format you specified.

Helper methods:

private static DataTable[] ParseAllTables(HtmlDocument doc)
{
    var result = new List<DataTable>();
    foreach (var table in doc.DocumentNode.Descendants("table"))
    {
        result.Add(ParseTable(table));
    }
    return result.ToArray();
}

private static DataTable ParseTable(HtmlNode table)
{
    var result = new DataTable();

    var rows = table.Descendants("tr");

    var header = rows.Take(1).First();
    foreach (var column in header.Descendants("td"))
    {
        result.Columns.Add(new DataColumn(column.InnerText, typeof(string)));
    }

    foreach (var row in rows.Skip(1))
    {
        var data = new List<string>();
        foreach (var column in row.Descendants("td"))
        {
            data.Add(column.InnerText);
        }
        result.Rows.Add(data.ToArray());
    }
    return result;
}

Usage example:

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    string html = @"
        <html><head></head>
        <body><div>
            <table border=1>
                <tr><td>sno</td><td>sname</td></tr>
                <tr><td>111</td><td>abcde</td></tr>
                <tr><td>213</td><td>ejkll</td></tr>
            </table>
            <table border=1>
                <tr><td>adress</td><td>phoneno</td><td>note</td></tr>
                <tr><td>asdlkj</td><td>121510</td><td>none</td></tr>
                <tr><td>asdlkj</td><td>214545</td><td>none</td></tr>
            </table>
        </div></body>
        </html>";

    HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();

    doc.LoadHtml(html);

   DataTable addressAndPhones;
   foreach (var table in ParseAllTables(doc))
   {
       if (table.Columns.Contains("phoneno") && table.Columns.Contains("adress"))
       {
           // You found the address and phone number table
           addressAndPhones = table;
       }
   }
}

OTHER TIPS

Loop through tablerows and get column values by index

int index = 0;
foreach(HtmlNode tablerow in table.SelectNodes("tr"))
{
    // skip the first row...
    if(index > 0)
    {
        // select first td element
        HtmlNode td1 = tablerow.SelectSingleNode("td[1]");
        if(td1 != null)
        {
            string address = td1.InnerText;
        }
    }
    index++;
}

If you can modify the webpage, you could use thead for header texts and tbody for actual values. 

<table id="mytable">
    <thead><tr><td>Column1</td><td>Column2</td></tr></thead>
    <tbody>
        <tr><td>Value 1</td><td>Value 2</td></tr>
        <tr><td>Value 1</td><td>Value 2</td></tr>
    </tbody>
</table>

Then you wouldn't have to skip the first row.

foreach(HtmlNode tablerow in table.SelectNodes("/table[@id=\"mytable\"]/tbody/tr"))
{
    // ...
}

Have a look at some xpath tutorial, it's very useful with HtmlAgilityPack.

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