A managed wrapper for the HTML Tidy library

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(For the latest changes, please see the history section at the end of the article)

Introduction

This is a small library in its initial creation state to provide a native .NET way in accessing the functions of the HTML Tidy library.

HTML Tidy is an open source C library for checking and generating clean XHTML/HTML. In other words: You can throw a misformatted HTML to the library and it will do its best to repair the errors and clean unnecessary items/tags from the HTML.

The Library

There already does exist a way to access the library from .NET, namely through the ATL wrapper of Charles Reitzel (SourceForge CVS repository of the sources here). But you need to register the COM ActiveX control first.

To get rid of this registration limitation, I created a C++/CLI wrapper of the original C library of HTML Tidy. This wrapper is a normal library that you can use in your .NET applications by simply adding a reference to the library.

Please note that my created library currently does not deserve to be called "library", because it really just consists of one single function until now.

The reason why I still do publish it here and now is that I want to provide the basic idea as early as possible to anyone being in the same situation than me (by needing a .NET wrapper for HTML Tidy). It's rather ease to take my library as a starting point and add the required functions you need. I did the core work, you simply add the functions you like.

Of course I gradually will add more functions to the library, as my requirements grow. And I also do encourage you to enhance it by yourself and send me your code so that I can include it.

The underlying C library

It was a pleasure to compile the original HTML Tidy C library. After first starting the provided Visual Studio .NET project file, compiled it for debug and release, received no errors, no warnings. Amazing! I never had such a seamless experience with compiling foreign C/C++ libraries.

Using my .NET library

The library currently has one function to call:

public string CleanHtml( string html );

Simply pass a string and get a cleaned up string back. Easy, isn't it?

An example usage could be:

using ( HtmlTidy tidy = new HtmlTidy() )
{
  string html =
    @"
    <html>
      <head>
        <meta http-equiv=""Content-Type"" content=""text/html; charset=utf-16"">
      </head>
      <body>
        <p>Hello, <b><i>With German</b></i>: ÄÖÜ. Some Chinese: &#35754;.</p>
      <body>
    </html>
    ";

 
  string s = tidy.CleanHtml(
    html,
    HtmlTidyOptions.ConvertToXhtml );

 
  Console.WriteLine( s );
}

As you see, simply pass the string to the function. There is an overload with one option (currently, will be enhanced in the future, too).

Redistributing

In order to redistribute the library, please ensure that the Microsoft CRT runtime DLLs "msvcr80.dll", "msvcm80.dll" and "msvcp80.dll" are also being distributed. The libraries are usually being found in the folder "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\redist\x86\Microsoft.VC80.CRT".

History

2007-01-14
Added the section about redistributing the CRT library.
2007-01-12
First version published.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

About the Author

Uwe Keim

Chief Technology Officer
Zeta Producer Desktop CMS

Germany

Member

Uwe does programming since 1989 with experiences in Assembler, C++, MFC and lots of web- and database stuff and now uses ASP.NET and C# extensively, too. He is also teached programming to students at the local university.

In his free time, he does climbing, running and mountain biking. You can watch him most of the day (and probably night) programming.

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Comments and Discussions

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Targeting 64-bit

Nick Higgs

23:56 23 Aug '07

The dll cannot run in ASP.NET Medium trust application

tsandl

10:37 13 Mar '07

Re: The dll cannot run in ASP.NET Medium trust application

Uwe Keim

19:22 13 Mar '07

Re: The dll cannot run in ASP.NET Medium trust application

tsandl

19:52 13 Mar '07

Re: The dll cannot run in ASP.NET Medium trust application

Uwe Keim

20:28 13 Mar '07

This sounds to me either as if the DLL is requesting too high permissions whereas it need not (and therefore I could lower it, if I set the required permission attributes to correct values), or that it actually DOES require the permissions and are not granted by default.

The message seems to not show WHAT permissions are required, only that they cannot be granted. Correct?

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