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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-11T06:46:38+00:00

I’m working on a C# console application. The ultimate goal is finding a specific

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I’m working on a C# console application. The ultimate goal is finding a specific row in a table, then clicking on a link to download a file generated by an old web app. (This is pretty old, so there’s no API for me to use)

The table follows a structure as follows:

<html>
<head>
    <title>Test Table Page</title>
</head>
<body>
    <table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="5">
        <tr>
            <td>Test Row One</td>
            <td>Test Content</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Test Row Two</td>
            <td>Test Content</td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Test Row Three</td>
            <td>Test Content</td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</body>

What I want to do is get the Test Content associated with Test Row Two. I need to go by the name of a report in an adjacent cell.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you think that the HTML is going to be XML-compliant, you could just use an XML parser like below (with XPath). Personally, I like to avoid HTML parsers because they are big and complicated. Like using a chainsaw to snap a twig in half. Sometimes, nothing else will do, but if there’s a simpler solution then try that first.

    Relevant Code Snippet: 

    var l_contentCell = l_navigator.SelectSingleNode( "//td[preceding-sibling::td/text()='Test Row Two']" );

    Full Source Code: 

    using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Linq;
using System.Xml.XPath;

namespace XmlSandbox {
    class Program {
        static void Main( string[] args ) {

            string l_xmlLiteral =
                "<html>\n" +
                "   <head>\n" +
                "       <title>Test Table Page</title>\n" +
                "   </head>\n" +
                "   <body>\n" +
                "       <table border=\"1\" cellpadding=\"3\" cellspacing=\"5\">\n" +
                "           <tr>\n" +
                "               <td>Test Row One</td>\n" +
                "               <td>Test Content</td>\n" +
                "           </tr>\n" +
                "           <tr>\n" +
                "               <td>Test Row Two</td>\n" +
                "               <td>Test Content</td>\n" +
                "           </tr>\n" +
                "           <tr>\n" +
                "               <td>Test Row Three</td>\n" +
                "               <td>Test Content</td>\n" +
                "           </tr>\n" +
                "       </table>\n" +
                "   </body>\n" +
                "</html>";

            var l_document = XDocument.Parse( l_xmlLiteral );
            var l_navigator = l_document.CreateNavigator();

            var l_contentCell = l_navigator.SelectSingleNode( "//td[preceding-sibling::td/text()='Test Row Two']" );

            Console.WriteLine( l_contentCell.Value );

        }
    }
}
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