Making control.Parsecontrol(HTMLString) filter Literalcontrol by Div elements instead of Br elements

Question

This is the first question I ask on this site, so I apologise for any muckups I make in advance, I will however try to ask this question as best as possible.

I'm finding my problem a little difficult to explain, but it boils down to this:

I have a large string of HTML that is generated by retrieving an XML file from a Web Service and using XSLT to transform it into a large string of HTML. I then parse it into a Control collection, add some event handlers and add it to a HTMLPlaceholder and hooray everything works just fine.

However, since this HTML String contains pretty much my entire website and is being run on hand terminals that cannot handle all the markup at once, I filter the markup I send, but this presents a problem.

Div elements cannot be filtered out without losing the Div element I want to keep. This is because Parsecontrol chops my Div elements in half and turns them into Literalcontrols, which are sorted by br elements.

Showing my code is a little hard, but here is an example of what happens:

//html contains the auto generated HTML 
ctrl = ParseControl (html);

            for ( int i = ctrl.Controls.Count - 1 ; i >= 0 ; --i )
            {

                string MenuId = "";
                Control theControl = ctrl.Controls[i];

                if ( theControl is Button )
                // Code that filters buttons
                if ( theControl is TextBox)
                // Code that filters textboxes

                if ( theControl is LiteralControl )
                {
                    LiteralControl literal = theControl as LiteralControl;

                   //This checks if the Div element I'm looking for exists
                   //If it does, I want to keep it
                    bool contains = literal.Text.Contains ("<div id=\"" + ParentDiv);
                    if ( contains )
                        MenuId = ParentDiv;
                }

                if ( MenuId != ParentDiv )
                {
                    ctrl.Controls.RemoveAt (i);
                }

            }

It's when I get to the LiteralControl part that things go wrong. Buttons and Textfields work fine. The LiteralControl however, chops my Div elements in half and are filtered by br elements. My div elements look like the following(Edited for brevity):

<div class="hide" id="TB_24000" >
<br>
<Textbox elements>
<Button elements>
<Label elements>
<br>
<Textbox elements>
<Button elements>
<Label elements>
<br>
<input type="button" id="btnBack" value="Tilbage" class="BackandResetButtons" onclick="backButton(this,document.getElementById('MenuLevel1'),document.getElementById('TB_24000')); return false;"></div>

But my LiteralControl elements look like the following(unedited):

<br><input type="button" id="btnBack" value="Tilbage" class="BackandResetButtons" onclick="backButton(this, document.getElementById('TB_33999'),document.getElementById('TB_38400'));&#xA;          "></div>

And the next:

<br><label class="label">FRAGT</label><br>

And the next:

<br><label class="label">SPEDITØR</label><br>

As you can see, my LiteralControls are based upon br elements, but the problem is that I want to filter based on Div elements. However, it doesn't seem to be possible without resorting to dirty and frankly unwanted hacks.

So my question is: How do I filter based on Div elements instead of Br elements? I can filter buttons and textboxes that add functionality just fine, but my layout and site is dependent on my Div elements being there.

Answer 1

Try closing your BR elements like this: <br /> I think that the parser is getting confused by the BR element with no closing tag.