Question

I have a basic anchor node as a string and would like to get the URL and the text from it. For example:

<a href="http://MyAwesomeWebsite.com/">Go to MyAwesomeWebsite</a>

I want two strings, one with:

http://MyAwesomeWebsite.com/

and the other with

MyAwesomeWebsite

How do I code this?

Answer 1

you can use regular expressions to extract the text that you want as next:

    Imports System.Text.RegularExpressions
    Sub Main()
    Dim anchor As String
    anchor = "<a href=""http://MyAwesomeWebsite.com/"">Go to MyAwesomeWebsite</a>"

    Dim href As String = Regex.Match(anchor, "\""[a-z,A-Z,0-9,:,/,.]+\""").Value
    Console.WriteLine(href.Substring(1, href.Length - 2))

    Dim content As String = Regex.Match(anchor, "\>[a-z,A-Z,0-9,:,/,., ]+\<").Value
    Console.WriteLine(content.Substring(1, content.Length - 2))
    Console.ReadKey()
    End Sub

Also you can use the methods provided by String like IndexOf and Substring.
But if you are thinking on parse a lot of those thinks I suggest you use a library like HtmlAgilePack.