Question

i have this hap code of which tries to selects sub-node from the main collection of nodes

Dim items As HtmlNodeCollection = doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//channel/item")

 For Each item In items
   link = item.SelectSingleNode("//link")
   title = item.SelectSingleNode("//title")
 next

the xml is

<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
    <title>title title</title>
<link>http://www.link.com</link>
<description>long decription</description>
<item>
    <title>title title</title>
    <link>http://www.link.com/</link>
    <description> description</description>
    </item>
    <item>
    <title>title title</title>
    <link>http://www.link.com/</link>
    <description> description</description>
    </item>
    <item>
    <title>title title</title>
    <link>http://www.link.com/</link>
    <description> description</description>
    </item>
</channel>
</rss>

but i don get the appropriate node title and link under item for each of the items.
where am i getting it wrong?

i could have just done

Dim links As HtmlNodeCollection = doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//channel/item/link")
Dim titles As HtmlNodeCollection = doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//channel/item/title")

but i need the link and title for each item

Answer 1

Seems to me like a bug in HtmlAgilityPack. I had issues only retrieving the InnerText for the link element, not the others. For that one, the text was found as its sibling, not as child at least.

Anyway, this wouldn’t be the first bug encountered in HtmlAgilityPack, so we should live with it :).

Alternative:

Use an XmlDocument since there’s no HTML involved here. That is an XML.

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
    xmlDoc.LoadXml(ConsoleApplication3.Properties.Settings.Default.RSS);

    var items = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("//channel/item");
    foreach (var item in items)
    {
        XmlNode node = (XmlNode)item;
        var link = node.SelectSingleNode("//link");
        var title = node.SelectSingleNode("//title");

        if (link != null)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(link.InnerText);
        }
        if (title != null)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(title.InnerText);
        }
    }

    Console.ReadKey();
}

Output:

http://www.link.com

title title

http://www.link.com

title title

http://www.link.com

title title