How to read contents of html table with .net?

[Jim S]

I have a need to read the contents of an html table on a remote web page into
a variable. I guess this is called screen scraping but not sure. I'm not
sure where to start or what the best practices are to accomplish this. For
instance; I have a healthcare app that need to check a gov't we page for a
user's license no# periodically. There is no login and I can put the user
info in the request URL no problem but not sure how to read the response data
in the tables. What is the namespace and class(s) I should be looking at?
Nothing jumped out at me under System.Web.
Thanks, Jim

[Martin Honnen]

Jim S wrote:

I have a need to read the contents of an html table on a remote web page into
a variable. I guess this is called screen scraping but not sure. I'm not
sure where to start or what the best practices are to accomplish this. For
instance; I have a healthcare app that need to check a gov't we page for a
user's license no# periodically. There is no login and I can put the user
info in the request URL no problem but not sure how to read the response data
in the tables. What is the namespace and class(s) I should be looking at?
Nothing jumped out at me under System.Web.

You can use WebClient to make a HTTP request and get the response. You
can also use WebRequest/HttpWebRequest to make a HTTP request and get
the response.
HTML parsing is however not supported in the .NET framework unless you
want to use the WebBrowser control in .NET 2.0 or COM interop with
MSHTML in .NET 1.x.
There are third party tools to parse HTML, for instance
<http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=htmlagilitypack>

--

Martin Honnen --- MVP XML
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

[Jim S]

Thanks Martin. The Html Agility Pack looks promising.

"Martin Honnen" wrote:

>

Jim S wrote:

I have a need to read the contents of an html table on a remote web page into
a variable. I guess this is called screen scraping but not sure. I'm not
sure where to start or what the best practices are to accomplish this. For
instance; I have a healthcare app that need to check a gov't we page for a
user's license no# periodically. There is no login and I can put the user
info in the request URL no problem but not sure how to read the response data
in the tables. What is the namespace and class(s) I should be looking at?
Nothing jumped out at me under System.Web.

You can use WebClient to make a HTTP request and get the response. You
can also use WebRequest/HttpWebRequest to make a HTTP request and get
the response.
HTML parsing is however not supported in the .NET framework unless you
want to use the WebBrowser control in .NET 2.0 or COM interop with
MSHTML in .NET 1.x.
There are third party tools to parse HTML, for instance
<http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=htmlagilitypack>

--

Martin Honnen --- MVP XML
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/