object becomes null after assigning it's innerhtml property

Question

I am trying to replace some code inside an html element. At one point, I add a elements around pieces of text within a webpage. At other I need to remove it (it's a simple search engine in geckofx-based browser)

if (element.OuterHtml.Contains(spanStyle))
    if (element.Parent != null)
    {
         string oldHtml = element.OuterHtml;
         string newHtml = oldHtml.Replace(spanStyle, "").Replace("</span>", "");
         element.Parent.InnerHtml = newHtml;
    }

The problem is that I cannot replace OuterHtml of the element - instead, I am trying to replace InnerHtml of it's parent.

However, the element.Parent becomes null as soon as element.Parent.InnerHtml = newHtml; is executed, and the OuterHtml of the element still contains the span element. I have even tried replacing the text content of the element.Parent.InnerHtml to see if the problem is in removing tags, but apparently it does not make a difference - as soon as I assign the element.Parent.InnerHtml , element.Parent becomes null.

Cheers!

Bartosz

Answer 1

If you change the InnerHtml of the elements parent it is obvious that the child element is not longer the child of the parent and therefore element.Parent becomes null . Have you tried to store element.Parent in a temporary variable like this?

var parent = element.Parent;
...
element.Parent.InnerHtml = newHtml;
...
// do something with the variable parent here which should not be null