Question

This is a related to a previous question I have asked here, see the link below for a brief description as to why I am trying to do this.

Regular expression from font to span (size and colour) and back (VB.NET)

Basically I need a regex replace function (or if this can be done in pure VB then that’s fine) to convert all ul tags in a string to textindent tags, with a different attribute value for the first textindent tag.

For example:

<ul>
   <li>This is some text</li>
   <li>This is some more text</li>
   <li>
      <ul>
         <li>This is some indented text</li>
         <li>This is some more text</li>
      </ul>
   </li>
   <li>More text!</li>
   <li>
      <ul>
         <li>This is some indented text</li>
         <li>This is some more text</li>
      </ul>
   </li>
   <li>More text!</li>
</ul>

<ul>
   <li>Another list item</li>
   <li>
      <ul>
         <li>Another nested list item</li>
       </ul>
   </li>
</ul>

Will become:

<textformat indent="0">
   <li>This is some text</li>
   <li>This is some more text</li>
   <li>
      <textformat indent="20">
         <li>This is some indented text</li>
         <li>This is some more text</li>
      </textformat>
   </li>
   <li>More text!</li>
   <li>
      <textformat indent="20">
         <li>This is some indented text</li>
         <li>This is some more text</li>
      </textformat>
   </li>
   <li>More text!</li>
</textformat>

<textformat indent="0">
   <li>Another list item</li>
   <li>
      <textformat indent="20">
         <li>Another nested list item</li>
      </textformat>
   </li>
</textformat>

Basically I want the first ul tag to have no indenting, but all nested ul tags to have an indent of 20.

I appreciate this is a strange request but hopefully that makes sense, please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Thanks for your help with this, I have managed to work out a solution myself using your reply.

Basically I am using a counter to keep track of what level of ul tag the regex has found, and then replacing it with the relevant attribute:

Dim ulCounter As Integer = 0    
Dim rxUL As New Regex("<ul>|</ul>")

xmlValue = rxUL.Replace(xmlValue, AddressOf Convert_UL)


Protected Function Convert_UL(ByVal m As Match) As String

    Dim HTML As String = ""

    If m.Value = "</ul>" Then
        ulCounter -= 1

        HTML = "</textformat>"
    Else
        ulCounter += 1

        If ulCounter > 1 Then
            HTML = "<textformat indent=""20"">"
        Else
            HTML = "<textformat indent=""0"">"
        End If
    End If

    Return HTML

End Function

This was a pretty random request so I’m not sure how much help this would be to anyone else, but just in case that was how I got round it!