Write HTML to string

Solution 1:

You're probably better off using an HtmlTextWriter or an XMLWriter than a plain StringWriter. They will take care of escaping for you, as well as making sure the document is well-formed.

This page shows the basics of using the HtmlTextWriter class, the gist of which being:

StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();

using (HtmlTextWriter writer = new HtmlTextWriter(stringWriter))
{
    writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Class, classValue);
    writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Div); // Begin #1

    writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Href, urlValue);
    writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.A); // Begin #2

    writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Src, imageValue);
    writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Width, "60");
    writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Height, "60");
    writer.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Alt, "");

    writer.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Img); // Begin #3
    writer.RenderEndTag(); // End #3

    writer.Write(word);

    writer.RenderEndTag(); // End #2
    writer.RenderEndTag(); // End #1
}
// Return the result.
return stringWriter.ToString();

Solution 2:

When I deal with this problem in other languages I go for a separation of code and HTML. Something like:

1.) Create a HTML template. use [varname] placeholders to mark replaced/inserted content.
2.) Fill your template variables from an array or structure/mapping/dictionary

Write( FillTemplate(myHTMLTemplate, myVariables) ) # pseudo-code

Solution 3:

Use an XDocument to create the DOM, then write it out using an XmlWriter. This will give you a wonderfully concise and readable notation as well as nicely formatted output.

Take this sample program:

using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Linq;

class Program {
    static void Main() {
        var xDocument = new XDocument(
            new XDocumentType("html", null, null, null),
            new XElement("html",
                new XElement("head"),
                new XElement("body",
                    new XElement("p",
                        "This paragraph contains ", new XElement("b", "bold"), " text."
                    ),
                    new XElement("p",
                        "This paragraph has just plain text."
                    )
                )
            )
        );

        var settings = new XmlWriterSettings {
            OmitXmlDeclaration = true, Indent = true, IndentChars = "\t"
        };
        using (var writer = XmlWriter.Create(@"C:\Users\wolf\Desktop\test.html", settings)) {
            xDocument.WriteTo(writer);
        }
    }
}

This generates the following output:

<!DOCTYPE html >
<html>
    <head />
    <body>
        <p>This paragraph contains <b>bold</b> text.</p>
        <p>This paragraph has just plain text.</p>
    </body>
</html>

Write HTML to string

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

Solution 3:

Related

Recent Posts