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Asked: 2026-05-14T06:32:16+00:00

Can I use Html Agility Pack to make the output look nicely indented, unnecessary

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Can I use Html Agility Pack to make the output look nicely indented, unnecessary white space stripped?

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  1. Editorial Team

    HAP is not going to give you the results you are after.

    Try using a .net wrapper for HtmlTidy such as the one found here

    using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using Mark.Tidy;

namespace CleanupHtml
{
    /// <summary>
    /// http://markbeaton.com/SoftwareInfo.aspx?ID=81a0ecd0-c41c-48da-8a39-f10c8aa3f931
    /// </summary>
    internal class Program
    {
        private static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string html =
                new WebClient().DownloadString(
                    "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2593147/html-agility-pack-make-code-look-neat/2610903#2610903");

            using (Document doc = new Document(html))
            {
                doc.ShowWarnings = false;
                doc.Quiet = true;
                doc.OutputXhtml = true;
                doc.OutputXml = true;
                doc.IndentBlockElements = AutoBool.Yes;
                doc.IndentAttributes = false;
                doc.IndentCdata = true;
                doc.AddVerticalSpace = false;
                doc.WrapAt = 120;

                doc.CleanAndRepair();

                string output = doc.Save();
                Console.WriteLine(output);
                File.WriteAllText("output.htm", output);
            }
        }
    }
}

    Results:

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
    <meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy for Windows (vers 14 October 2008), see www.w3.org" />
    <title>
      Html Agility Pack: make code look neat - Stack Overflow
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                        Can I use Html Agility Pack to make the output look nicely indented, unnecessary white space
                        stripped?
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                          <div class="user-info">
                            <div class="user-action-time">
                              asked <span title="2010-04-07 14:13:47Z" class="relativetime">2 days ago</span>
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                            <div>
                              what output? From where? some more details perhaps? &ndash;&nbsp;<a href=
                              "/users/97614/sam-holder" title="1868" class="comment-user">Sam Holder</a> <span class=
                              "comment-date"><span title="2010-04-07 14:16:41Z">2 days ago</span></span>
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                          <td class="comment-text">
                            <div>
                              <i>(reference)</i> <a href="http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/Wikipage" rel=
                              "nofollow">htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/Wikipage</a> &ndash;&nbsp;<a href=
                              "/users/208809/gordon" title="16497" class="comment-user">Gordon</a> <span class=
                              "comment-date"><span title="2010-04-07 14:16:55Z">2 days ago</span></span>
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                          </td>
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                        <tr id="comment-2624419" class="comment">
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                          <td class="comment-text">
                            <div>
                              output = html code output &ndash;&nbsp;<a href="/users/51795/illdev" title="53" class=
                              "comment-user owner">illdev</a> <span class="comment-date"><span title=
                              "2010-04-10 13:14:42Z">12 secs ago</span></span>
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                      <p>
                        A variation of this question has been answered recently
                      </p>
                      <ul>
                        <li>
                          <a href=
                          "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2490765/which-is-the-best-html-tidy-pack-is-there-any-option-in-html-agility-pack-to-mak/2507673#2507673">
                          http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2490765/which-is-the-best-html-tidy-pack-is-there-any-option-in-html-agility-pack-to-mak/2507673#2507673</a>
                        </li>
                      </ul>
                      <p>
                        Basically the outcome of this was that while you <strong>can</strong> use HtmlAgilityPack to
                        clean it up a bit by using the fix nested tags.
                      </p>
                      <p>
                        The best solution is to use something called Tidy which is an application that was originally
                        created by some developers at w3c and then made open source. Its the engine that powers the w3c
                        validator as well.
                      </p>
                      <p>
                        This article covers how to use it but you had to sign up (free) to view it:
                      </p>
                      <ul>
                        <li>
                          <a href="http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/20505/1763/" rel=
                          "nofollow">http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/20505/1763/</a>
                        </li>
                      </ul>
                      <p>
                        It seems like a legit article but its funny because nobody else seems to have covered this
                        topic in the last six years...
                      </p>
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                          <div class="user-info">
                            <div class="user-action-time">
                              answered <span title="2010-04-09 20:55:18Z" class="relativetime">16 hours ago</span>
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                      <p>
                        Output as XHTML and run that through an <a href=
                        "http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmltextwriter.indentation.aspx" rel=
                        "nofollow">XmlTextWriter</a>
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                              answered <span title="2010-04-09 21:02:34Z" class="relativetime">16 hours ago</span>
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