Question

I have a string, which could look like this:

"Sandra <as type="1">walked</as> in the park, and met a <as type="3">random</a> stranger".

Based on these xml tags, I would like to replace the tag with something else (a list of controls).

For instance, when I see <as type="1">walked</as> , I want to return a literal and a textbox to be replaced in that sentense.

I guess the simplest way would be to add the whole thing in a placeholder, but I’ve no idea how to do the replacement part.

Answer 1

You currently don’t have valid XML, so as a first step I recommend you surround it with some basic tags, for example:

var start = "Sandra <as type=\"1\">walked</as> in the park, and met a <as type=\"3\">random</as> stranger";
var startAsXml = "<root>" + start + "</root>";

Now we can parse it:

var doc = XElement.Parse(startAsXml);

Now we have two types of nodes in this XML – Text and Elements. You can easily loop through any number of ways and extract them, change them, do what you like. Here’s an example:

foreach (var node in doc.Nodes()) 
{
    if (node.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Text) Console.WriteLine("Text: {0}", node.ToString().Trim());
    else if (node.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element) 
    {
        var element = (XElement)node;
        Console.WriteLine("Element: Name={0} Type={1} Value={2}",
                          element.Name, element.Attribute("type").Value, element.Value);
    }
}

This will print:

Text: Sandra 
Element: Name=as Type=1 Value=walked
Text:  in the park, and met a 
Element: Name=as Type=3 Value=random
Text:  stranger