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SpellCheck.net spell checking parsing using C#

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19 Jun 20022 min read 176.1K   3.5K   54   20
Online spell checking using C# and regular expressions.

Introduction

SpellCheck.NET is free online spell checking site. Whenever I need to check my spelling I visit this site, so I decided to write a parser for this site. I wrote this parser with C# and wrapped it up in a DLL file and called it Word.dll. In this article I will show you how to parse a HTML page using regular expressions. I will not explain all the source code since it is available for download. My main purpose of this project is to demonstrate how to parse a HTML page using regular expressions. 

Before this project I have never worked with regular expressions seriously, so I decided to use regular expressions. In this project I have learned a lot about C# regular expressions and .NET framework. The difficult part was in this project writing regular expressions pattern. So I referred to different sites and books to get the right pattern.

Here are some useful sites to check out.

About Word.dll

Word.dll has one public class and two public methods

  1. Public Class SpellCheck

       Include "using Word.dll" at the top of file for the object reference.

       SpellCheck word = new SpellCheck();
  2. Public Method CheckSpelling

    This method will check the word and return true or false. If the word is correct then it will return true otherwise false.

       bool status = false;
       status = word.CheckSpelling("a word");
  3. Public Method GetSpellingSuggestions

    This method will return the collection of suggested words.

    foreach(string suggestion in word.GetSpellingSuggestions("a word"))
    {
       System.Console.WriteLine( suggestion );
    }
    

Parser Technique

  1. Connect to spellcheck.net site and pass the word.
  2. Look for the word "correctly." in html file, if found return true
  3. else look for the word "misspelled.", if found return false.
    regular expression pattern @"(correctly.)|(misspelled.)"
  4. If the word misspelled found in html then look for the word "suggestions:"
    regular expression pattern  @"(suggestions:)"
  5. and parse the string between <blockquote>
    regular expression pattern  @"<blockquote>(?:\s*([^<]+) \s*)+ </blockquote>"
  6. and finally return the collection of suggested words.

C# code:

Source file is included in zip format for download.

Calling Word.dll wrapper class:

This is how you would call this wrapper class in your application.

using System;

//Word.dll
using Word;

/// <summary>
/// Test Harness for SpellCheck Class
/// </summary>
class TestHarness
{
    /// <summary>
    /// testing Word Class
    /// </summary>
    [STAThread]
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        SpellCheck word = new SpellCheck();

        bool status = false;
        string s = "youes";

        Console.WriteLine("Checking for word : " + s );
            
        // check to see if the word is not correct  
        // return the bool (true|false)
        status = word.CheckSpelling(s);

        if (status == false)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("This word is misspelled : " + s);
            Console.WriteLine("Here are some suggestions");
            Console.WriteLine("-------------------------");

            foreach( string suggestion in word.GetSpellingSuggestions(s) ) 
            {
                System.Console.WriteLine( suggestion ); 
            }
        }
        else if (status == true)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("This word is correct : " + s );
        }

    }
}

Compiling:

Run the "compile.bat" file at the DOS prompt, it will create necessary files.

Output:

This is how your screen would look like after you execute TestHarness.exe file.

Image 1

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here


Written By
Web Developer
United States United States
Currently working with C# and ASP.NET.

Comments and Discussions

 
Generalresults are wrong Pin
Member 1148896210-May-15 10:15
Member 1148896210-May-15 10:15 
Questionproblem with SpellCheck.net Pin
piitrss5-Jun-13 22:29
piitrss5-Jun-13 22:29 
GeneralOpen Office Spellchecker for .NET + Hyphenation + Thesaurus Pin
Thomas Maierhofer (Tom)16-Nov-09 6:22
Thomas Maierhofer (Tom)16-Nov-09 6:22 
GeneralRelated Dictionaries Pin
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar29-Jan-07 23:39
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar29-Jan-07 23:39 
GeneralDictionaries Pin
Franck Quintana25-Oct-06 7:36
Franck Quintana25-Oct-06 7:36 
GeneralRe: Dictionaries Pin
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:15
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:15 
GeneralRe: Dictionaries Pin
Franck Quintana19-Mar-07 6:37
Franck Quintana19-Mar-07 6:37 
QuestionCopyright? Pin
jmw17-Aug-06 8:33
jmw17-Aug-06 8:33 
AnswerRe: Copyright? Pin
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:15
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:15 
GeneralDeveloping a spell checker Pin
mad_68421-Jan-05 19:41
mad_68421-Jan-05 19:41 
GeneralRe: Developing a spell checker Pin
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:13
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:13 
Generalcheck existance of word.dll Pin
Bunny Rabbit4-Feb-04 17:29
Bunny Rabbit4-Feb-04 17:29 
GeneralRe: check existance of word.dll Pin
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:13
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:13 
GeneralWord.dll Pin
halegua9-Mar-03 19:58
halegua9-Mar-03 19:58 
GeneralRe: Word.dll Pin
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:14
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:14 
GeneralThe Google Version Pin
Blake Coverett20-Jun-02 17:42
Blake Coverett20-Jun-02 17:42 
GeneralRe: The Google Version Pin
Nick Parker23-Jun-02 17:39
protectorNick Parker23-Jun-02 17:39 
GeneralRe: The Google Version Pin
Paresh Gheewala29-Mar-05 23:06
Paresh Gheewala29-Mar-05 23:06 
GeneralRe: The Google Version Pin
Nick Parker30-Mar-05 1:52
protectorNick Parker30-Mar-05 1:52 
GeneralRe: The Google Version Pin
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:14
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar19-Mar-07 6:14 

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