New Post: Changing Phrases to Links

Hi.

I have a SQL database containing the HTML for the pages in my site. I use ADO to pull this out and display it.

I am in the process of developing a feature which allows me to replace certain phrases with links. This works well at a basic level but I need to do some extra checking to make it work perfectly.

Basically, I'm pulling out the HTML and, before I pass it to the page, assigning it to a string variable in C#. I then have a second table with two columns: one containing phrases I want to look for; another containing full URLs I want to replace the phrase with. So, for example, if the phrase BBC was found, I replace it <a href=http://www.bbc.co.uk>BBC</a>.

I'm looping through this second table looking at every phrase, like so:

while (rdr2.Read())
     {
          tempText = tempText.Replace((string)rdr2["phrase"], "<a href=\"" + (string)rdr2["url"] + "\">" + (string)rdr2["phrase"] + "</a>");
     }
rdr2.Close();

Easy enough.

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My Problem

I need to replace the phrase with the link ONLY when the phrase is not either already within a link or is in a header.

I've tried checks for "phrase</a>" but these don't work as the phrases in links are often in <span>s within links. The same goes for headers.

I have been advised that the Html Agility Pack is the way to go.

I can't find any documentation on it however so would appreciate it if someone could offer modifications to my code to take care of this and, perhaps, a brief explanation so I can undersand it, or a pointer to some documentation.

Thanks