How to format a string of HTML programatically

Question

I've got unformatted html in a string.

I am trying to format it nicely and output the formatted html back into a string. I've been trying to use The System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter to no avail:

System.IO.StringWriter wString = new System.IO.StringWriter();
System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter wHtml = new System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter(wString);

wHtml.Write(sMyUnformattedHtml);

string sMyFormattedHtml = wString.ToString();

All I get is the unformatted html, is it possible to achieve what I'm trying to do here?

Answer 1

Here's a function that does exactly that:

    // Attractively format the XML with consistant indentation.

    public static String PrettyPrint(String XML)
    {
        String Result = "";

        using (MemoryStream MS = new MemoryStream())
        {
            using (XmlTextWriter W = new XmlTextWriter(MS, Encoding.Unicode))
            {
                XmlDocument D = new XmlDocument();

                try
                {
                    // Load the XmlDocument with the XML.
                    D.LoadXml(XML);

                    W.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;

                    // Write the XML into a formatting XmlTextWriter
                    D.WriteContentTo(W);
                    W.Flush();
                    MS.Flush();

                    // Have to rewind the MemoryStream in order to read
                    // its contents.
                    MS.Position = 0;

                    // Read MemoryStream contents into a StreamReader.
                    StreamReader SR = new StreamReader(MS);

                    // Extract the text from the StreamReader.
                    String FormattedXML = SR.ReadToEnd();

                    Result = FormattedXML;
                }
                catch (XmlException ex)
                {
                    Result= ex.ToString();
                }

                W.Close();
            }
            MS.Close();
        }
        Debug.WriteLine(Result);
        return Result;
    }

Answer 2

You can pass it to tidy externally or use XmlTextWriter if you are willing to use XHTML instead of HTML.