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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T16:41:35+00:00

Task I’m supposed to create an application that extracts the name of an item

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Task

I’m supposed to create an application that extracts the name of an item from an Amazon.com webpage.

Action

I thought I would used the Html Agility Pack to get this done, and I think I’ve got a solution going, but there is one bug that keeps persisting.

Result

Lets say I have tried to pull the html source from n different sites, the application always uses the source of the first site for sites 1 – n and I’m not sure why. I can extract html from a different website if and only if I restart my computer.

Code

    private void extractHTML()
    {
        //retreive URL
        string address = txtURL.Text;
        string itemId = "result_0";

        //create document
        HtmlWeb webGet = new HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlWeb();
        HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument document = webGet.Load(address);

        //look for name of result
        HtmlNode node = document.GetElementbyId(itemId);            
        if(node != null)
        {
            IEnumerable<HtmlNode> allH3 = node.Descendants("h3");

            foreach (HtmlNode h3 in allH3)
            {
                if (h3.ChildNodes[1].InnerHtml == null)
                {
                    continue;
                }
                else
                {
                    lblId.Text = itemId;

                    //dig down to lowest subnode to get correct InnerHtml
                    HtmlNode subNode = h3.ChildNodes[1];
                    if (subNode.ChildNodes.Count > 0)
                    {
                        lblName.Text = subNode.ChildNodes[subNode.ChildNodes.Count - 1].InnerHtml;
                        break;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        lblName.Text = h3.ChildNodes[1].InnerHtml;                            
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }
        }            
    }

Help is much appreciated! Thanks in advance.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If, as stated in the comments, you’re targeting a page such as http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_5?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=radio&sprefix=radio%2Caps%2C182 to try to get all item names, then the following code:

    HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
doc.Load(myHtmlFile);

foreach (HtmlNode node in doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//span[@class='lrg bold']"))
{
    Console.WriteLine(node.InnerHtml);
}

    will output this:

    Sony ICF-S10MK2 Pocket AM/FM Radio, Silver
Ambient Weather WR-111A Emergency Solar Hand Crank AM/FM/NOAA Digital Radio, Flashlight, Cell Phone Charger with NOAA Certified Weather Alert &amp; Cables
Sony ICF38 Portable AM/FM Radio (Black)
Coby CX39 World Band AM/FM/Shortwave Radio with Digital Display, Silver
Radio
Sony ICF-C318 Clock Radio with Dual Alarm (Black)
Sony Icf38 Portable Am Fm Radio Led Tuning Indicator Lg Spkr
TuneIn Radio
Sangean WR-2 Digital AM/FM Tabletop Radio, Walnut
SANGEAN WR-11 AM/FM Table Top Radio
Crosley Solo Radio CR221 Black
Sony ICF-C218 Automatic Time Set Clock Radio (Black)
Coby CXCD251BLK Portable CD Player with AM/FM Radio, Black
Sony ICFC414 Clock Radio
Radio
Panasonic RF-P50 Pocket AM/FM Radio, Silver

    The XPATH expression will just get all SPAN elements that have a CLASS attribute set to ‘lrg bold’. To find that, I just looked at the saved version of the HTML and determined a good discriminant for the item names.

    I suggest you learn a bit of XPATH, as it’s very powerful. A good tutorial is here: XPATH Tutorial

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