Question

Is there an easy way to count the nodes in a HTML file? I also need to count nodes of a certain type such as div etc.

I’d like to do this if possible without having to use an external library like HTMLAgilityPack if possible. Also, the HTML I’m dealing with is not guarenteed to be well formed and valid.

Is there a way to do this from C#?

Thanks.

Answer 1

first of all. are your sure a client-side solution using javascript isn’t sufficent to your needs?
because the easiest way to count nodes within an HTML document is using jQuery on the client-side browser.

<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.min.js"></script>
<script>
    $('html').children() // will give you all child elements of the html element
    $('body').children() // same for body element
    $('body').children('div') // will give you just the direct children elements of 'div' type
    $('body').find('div') // will give you all the nested elements of 'div' type
</script>

if you are unfamilier with jQuery then take a look at http://www.jquery.com

if u still need a C# solution for server-side parsing of the document then then i would recommend to use HTMLAgilityPack (even thou you wish not to). writing your own parser seems to me like a waste of time as you need to consider malformed html/xml and such which can be a pain.

try and use this s-overflow article: What is the best way to parse html in C#?

hope it will satisfy your needs