Question

I have a XHTML string I want to replace tags in
for example

<span tag="x">FOO</span> 
<span tag="y"> <b>bar</b> some random text <span>another span</span> </span>

I want to be able to find tag=”x” and replace FOO with my own content
and find tag=y and replace all the inner content with by own content.

What is the best way to do this? I am thinking regex is definitely out of the question.
Can XPATH do this or is that just for searching can it do manipulation?

Answer 1

If you’re sure the content is XHTML (i.e. well-formed XML) then XPath can certainly do it.

var doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.LoadXml("<span tag=...");

foreach(var node in doc.SelectNodes("//span[tag=x]"))
{
    node.InnerXml = "New Content";
}
foreach(var node in doc.SelectNodes("//span[tag=y]"))
{
    node.InnerXml = "Different Content";
}