Grab all text from html with Html Agility Pack

I was in the need of a solution that extracts all text but discards the content of script and style tags. I could not find it anywhere, but I came up with the following which suits my own needs:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
IEnumerable<HtmlNode> nodes = doc.DocumentNode.Descendants().Where( n => 
    n.NodeType == HtmlNodeType.Text &&
    n.ParentNode.Name != "script" &&
    n.ParentNode.Name != "style");
foreach (HtmlNode node in nodes) {
    Console.WriteLine(node.InnerText);

XPATH is your friend :)

HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
doc.LoadHtml(@"<html><body><p>foo <a href='http://www.example.com'>bar</a> baz</p></body></html>");

foreach(HtmlNode node in doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//text()"))
{
    Console.WriteLine("text=" + node.InnerText);
}


var pageContent = "{html content goes here}";
var pageDoc = new HtmlDocument();
pageDoc.LoadHtml(pageContent);
var pageText = pageDoc.DocumentNode.InnerText;

The specified example for html content: 

<html><body><p>foo <a href='http://www.example.com'>bar</a> baz</p></body></html>

will produce the following output:

foo bar baz


var root = doc.DocumentNode;
var sb = new StringBuilder();
foreach (var node in root.DescendantNodesAndSelf())
{
    if (!node.HasChildNodes)
    {
        string text = node.InnerText;
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
            sb.AppendLine(text.Trim());
    }
}

This does what you need, but I am not sure if this is the best way. Maybe you should iterate through something other than DescendantNodesAndSelf for optimal performance.

Tags:

C#

Html Agility Pack

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