how can i remove an outer <p>…</p> from a string

Question

I want to query a string (html) from a database and display it on a webpage. The problem is that the data has a

 <p> around the text (ending with </p>

I want to strip this outer tag in my viewmodel or controlleraction that returns this data. what is the best way of doing this in C#?

Answer 1

Might be overkill for your needs, but if you want to parse the HTML you can use the HtmlAgilityPack - certainly a cleaner solution in general than most suggested here, although it might not be as performant:

HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
doc.LoadHtml("<p> around the text (ending with </p>");
string result = doc.DocumentNode.FirstChild.InnerHtml;

Answer 2

If you're absolutely sure the string will always have that tag, you can use String.Substring like myString.Substring(3, myString.Length-7) or so.

A more robust method would be to either manually code the appropriate tests or use a regular expression, or ultimately, use an HTML parser as suggested by BrokenGlass's answer .

UPDATE : Using regexes you could do:

String filteredString = Regex.Match(myString, "^<p>(.*)</p>").ToString();

You could add \\s after the initial ^ to remove also leading whitespace. Also, you can check the result of Match to see if the string matched the <p>...</p> pattern at all. This may also help.

Answer 3

如果数据总是被<p> ... </p>包围：

string withoutParas = withParas.Substring(3, withParas.Length - 7);

Answer 4

尝试使用字符串函数Remove（）传递<p>的FirstIndex（）和</p>的最后一个索引，长度为3

Answer 5

If you are absolutely guaranteed that you string will always fit the pattern of <p>...</p> , then the other solutions using data.Substring(3, data.Length - 6) are sufficient. If, however, there's any chance that it could look at all different , then you really need to use an HTML parser. The consensus is that the HTML Agility Pack is the way to go.

Answer 6

s = s.Replace("<p>", String.Empty).Replace("</p>", String.Empty);