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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-18T05:05:33+00:00

I just wrote up this test to see if I was crazy… using System;

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I just wrote up this test to see if I was crazy…

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using HtmlAgilityPack;

namespace HtmlAgilityPackFormBug
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var doc = new HtmlDocument();
            doc.LoadHtml(@"
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Form Test</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <form>
            <input type=""text"" />
            <input type=""reset"" />
            <input type=""submit"" />
        </form>
    </body>
</html>
");
            var body = doc.DocumentNode.SelectSingleNode("//body");
            foreach (var node in body.ChildNodes.Where(n => n.NodeType == HtmlNodeType.Element))
                Console.WriteLine(node.XPath);
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}

And it outputs:

/html[1]/body[1]/form[1]
/html[1]/body[1]/input[1]
/html[1]/body[1]/input[2]
/html[1]/body[1]/input[3]

But, if I change <form> to <xxx> it gives me:

/html[1]/body[1]/xxx[1]

(As it should). So… it looks like those input elements are not contained within the form, but directly within the body, as if the <form> just closed itself off immediately. What’s up with that? Is this a bug?

Digging through the source, I see:

ElementsFlags.Add("form", HtmlElementFlag.CanOverlap | HtmlElementFlag.Empty);

It has the “empty” flag, like META and IMG. Why?? Forms are most definitely not supposed to be empty.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This is also reported in this workitem. It contains a suggested workaround from DarthObiwan.

    You can change this without recompiling. The ElementFlags list is a
    static property on the HtmlNode class. It can be removed with

        HtmlNode.ElementsFlags.Remove("form");

    before doing the document load

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