C# Convert Relative to Absolute Links in HTML String

Question

I\'m mirroring some internal websites for backup purposes. As of right now I basically use this c# code:

System.Net.WebClient client = new System.Net.WebCli         


        

Answer 1

You could use the HTMLAgilityPack accomplish this. You would do something along these (not tested) lines:

• Load the url
• Select all links
• Load the link into a Uri and test whether it is relative If it relative convert it to absolute
• Update the links value with the new uri
• save the file

Here are a few examples:

Relative to absolute paths in HTML (asp.net)

http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Examples&referringTitle=Home

http://blog.abodit.com/2010/03/a-simple-web-crawler-in-c-using-htmlagilitypack/

Answer 2

Just use this function

'# converts relative URL ro Absolute URI
    Function RelativeToAbsoluteUrl(ByVal baseURI As Uri, ByVal RelativeUrl As String) As Uri
        ' get action tags, relative or absolute
        Dim uriReturn As Uri = New Uri(RelativeUrl, UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute)
        ' Make it absolute if it's relative
        If Not uriReturn.IsAbsoluteUri Then
            Dim baseUrl As Uri = baseURI
            uriReturn = New Uri(baseUrl, uriReturn)
        End If
        Return uriReturn
    End Function

Answer 3

The most robust solution would be to use the HTMLAgilityPack as others have suggested. However a reasonable solution using regular expressions is possible using the Replace overload that takes a MatchEvaluator delegate, as follows:

var baseUri = new Uri("http://test.com");
var pattern = @"(?<name>src|href)=""(?<value>/[^""]*)""";
var matchEvaluator = new MatchEvaluator(
    match =>
    {
        var value = match.Groups["value"].Value;
        Uri uri;

        if (Uri.TryCreate(baseUri, value, out uri))
        {
            var name = match.Groups["name"].Value;
            return string.Format("{0}=\"{1}\"", name, uri.AbsoluteUri);
        }

        return null;
    });
var adjustedHtml = Regex.Replace(originalHtml, pattern, matchEvaluator);

The above sample searches for attributes named src and href that contain double quoted values starting with a forward slash. For each match, the static Uri.TryCreate method is used to determine if the value is a valid relative uri.

Note that this solution doesn't handle single quoted attribute values and certainly doesn't work on poorly formed HTML with unquoted values.

Answer 4

Uri WebsiteImAt = new Uri(
       "http://www.w3schools.com/media/media_mimeref.asp?q=1&s=2,2#a");
string href = new Uri(WebsiteImAt, "/something/somethingelse/filename.asp")
       .AbsoluteUri;
string href2 = new Uri(WebsiteImAt, "something.asp").AbsoluteUri;
string href3 = new Uri(WebsiteImAt, "something").AbsoluteUri;

which with your Regex-based approach is probably (untested) mappable to:

        String value = Regex.Replace(text, "<(.*?)(src|href)=\"(?!http)(.*?)\"(.*?)>", match => 
            "<" + match.Groups[1].Value + match.Groups[2].Value + "=\""
                + new Uri(WebsiteImAt, match.Groups[3].Value).AbsoluteUri + "\""
                + match.Groups[4].Value + ">",RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Multiline);

I should also advise not to use Regex here, but to apply the Uri trick to some code using a DOM, perhaps XmlDocument (if xhtml) or the HTML Agility Pack (otherwise), looking at all //@src or //@href attributes.