Regex to parse out html from CDATA with C#

c# regex cdata
Little Larry Sellers picture Little Larry Sellers · May 1, 2009 · Viewed 12.7k times · Source

I would like to parse out any HTML data that is returned wrapped in CDATA.

As an example <![CDATA[<table><tr><td>Approved</td></tr></table>]]>

Thanks!

Answer

Ron Harlev picture Ron Harlev · May 1, 2009

The expression to handle your example would be 

\<\!\[CDATA\[(?<text>[^\]]*)\]\]\>

Where the group "text" will contain your HTML.

The C# code you need is:

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
RegexOptions   options = RegexOptions.None;
Regex          regex = new Regex(@"\<\!\[CDATA\[(?<text>[^\]]*)\]\]\>", options);
string         input = @"<![CDATA[<table><tr><td>Approved</td></tr></table>]]>";

// Check for match
bool   isMatch = regex.IsMatch(input);
if( isMatch )
  Match   match = regex.Match(input);
  string   HTMLtext = match.Groups["text"].Value;
end if

The "input" variable is in there just to use the sample input you provided

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