Split html row into string array

Question

I have data in an html file, in a table:

<table>
    <tr><td>001</td><td>MC Hammer</td><td>Can't Touch This</td></tr>
    <tr><td>002</td><td>Tone Loc</td><td>Funky Cold Medina</td></tr>
    <tr><td>003</td><td>Funkdoobiest</td><td>Bow Wow Wow</td></tr>
</table>

How do I split a single row into an array or list?

string row = streamReader.ReadLine();

List<string> data = row.Split //... how do I do this bit?

string artist = data[1];

Answer 1

Short answer: never try to parse HTML from the wild with regular expressions. It will most likely come back to haunt you.

Longer answer: As long as you can absolutely, positively guarantee that the HTML that you are parsing fits the given structure, you can use string.Split() as Jenni suggested.

string html = "<tr><td>001</td><td>MC Hammer</td><td>Can't Touch This</td></tr>";

string[] values = html.Split(new string[] { "<tr>","</tr>","<td>","</td>" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

List<string> list = new List<string>(values);

Listing the tags independently keeps this slightly more readable, and the .RemoveEmptyEntries will keep you from getting an empty string in your list between adjacent closing and opening tags.

If this HTML is coming from the wild, or from a tool that may change - in other words, if this is more than a one-off transaction - I strongly encourage you to use something like the HTML Agility Pack instead. It's pretty easy to integrate, and there are lots of examples on the Intarwebs.

Answer 2

If your HTML is well-formed you could use LINQ to XML:

string input = @"<table>
    <tr><td>001</td><td>MC Hammer</td><td>Can't Touch This</td></tr>
    <tr><td>002</td><td>Tone Loc</td><td>Funky Cold Medina</td></tr>
    <tr><td>003</td><td>Funkdoobiest</td><td>Bow Wow Wow</td></tr>
</table>";

var xml = XElement.Parse(input);

// query each row
foreach (var row in xml.Elements("tr"))
{
    foreach (var item in row.Elements("td"))
    {
        Console.WriteLine(item.Value);
    }
    Console.WriteLine();
}

// if you really need a string array...
var query = xml.Elements("tr")
               .Select(row => row.Elements("td")
                                 .Select(item => item.Value)
                                 .ToArray());

foreach (var item in query)
{
    // foreach over item content
    // or access via item[0...n]
}

Answer 3

You could try:

Row.Split /<tr><td>|<\/td><td>|<\/td><\/tr>/

But it depends on how regular the HTML is. Is it programmatically generated, or does a human write it? You should only use a regular expression if you're sure it will always be generated the same way, otherwise you should use a proper HTML parser

Answer 4

When parsing HTML, I usually turn to the HTML Agility Pack.