Convert HTML text to Plain text in C#

Question

Hello

I have HTML text stored in a string variable in C#.
I need to convert that text in to plain text and remove all the html tags.

How can I do that

thank u

Answer 1

You could convert HTML text to plain text by using the following HTMLToText method.

The code of xaml:

<Grid>  
        <RichTextBox>  
            <FlowDocument>  
                <Paragraph Name="p"></Paragraph>  
                <Paragraph Name="p1"></Paragraph>  
            </FlowDocument>  
        </RichTextBox>  
    </Grid>  

The code of xaml.cs:

public partial class MainWindow : Window  
  {  
    public MainWindow()  
    {  
      InitializeComponent();  
      string html = "<p>Some text here</p>" +  
        "< div > Some more<strong> text</ strong ></ div > ";  
      p.Inlines.Add(html);  
      p1.Inlines.Add(HTMLToText(html));  
    }  
    public string HTMLToText(string HTMLCode)  
    {  
      // Remove new lines since they are not visible in HTML  
      HTMLCode = HTMLCode.Replace("\n", " ");  
      // Remove tab spaces  
      HTMLCode = HTMLCode.Replace("\t", " ");  
      // Remove multiple white spaces from HTML  
      HTMLCode = Regex.Replace(HTMLCode, "\\s+", " ");  
      // Remove HEAD tag  
      HTMLCode = Regex.Replace(HTMLCode, "<head.*?</head>", ""  
                          , RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Singleline);  
      // Remove any JavaScript  
      HTMLCode = Regex.Replace(HTMLCode, "<script.*?</script>", ""  
        , RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Singleline);  
      // Replace special characters like &, <, >, " etc.  
      StringBuilder sbHTML = new StringBuilder(HTMLCode);  
      // Note: There are many more special characters, these are just  
      // most common. You can add new characters in this arrays if needed  
      string[] OldWords = {"&nbsp;", "&amp;", "&quot;", "&lt;",  
   "&gt;", "&reg;", "&copy;", "&bull;", "&trade;","&#39;"};  
      string[] NewWords = { " ", "&", "\"", "<", ">", "®", "©", "•", "™", "\'" };  
      for (int i = 0; i < OldWords.Length; i++)  
      {  
        sbHTML.Replace(OldWords[i], NewWords[i]);  
      }  
      // Check if there are line breaks (<br>) or paragraph (<p>)  
      sbHTML.Replace("<br>", "\n<br>");  
      sbHTML.Replace("<br ", "\n<br ");  
      sbHTML.Replace("<p ", "\n<p ");  
      // Finally, remove all HTML tags and return plain text  
      return System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(  
        sbHTML.ToString(), "<[^>]*>", "");  
    }  
  }  

The picture of result:

---

If the answer is the right solution, please click Accept Answer and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click Comment. 
Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Answer 2

Sometimes you can use a code like this:

string html = "Text1 <table border='1'><tr><td>Text2 <b>Text3<!-- comment --></b></td></tr></table>";
XDocument d = XDocument.Parse( "<r>" + html + "</r>" );
string text = (string)d.Root;

Answer 3

Thank you Viorel-1

Unfortunately it did not work and gives error

System.Xml.XmlException: 'Reference to undeclared entity 'nbsp'.

Answer 4

Thank you very much HuiLiu-MSFT

Now it is working fine.