Remove all div elements from string using vb.net

Issue

I want to remove all elements, including the ones with attributes like class, from my string. I already checked here, so regex is apparently not the answer: RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

I currently already have something with regex that replaces all tags from a string (note, I'm never parsing a full HTML document if that matters) and preserves the content: Regex.Replace(s, "<[^>]*(>|$)", String.Empty). However, I just want the div tags removed and preserve the content.

So I have:

<div class=""fade-content""><div><span>some  content</span></div></div>
<div>some  content</div> 

Desired output:

<span>some  content</span>
some  content

I was going the regex path stil, and trying something like: <div>.*<\/div>, but that excludes divs with attributes.

How can I remove div elements only, using VB.NET?

Solution

There are several ways to do this. One, short and simple, is the following one:

Regex.Replace(s, "</?div.*?>", String.Empty)

Here is an example:

    's simulates your html file
    Dim s As String = "<div class="""" fade-content""""><div><span>some  content</span></div></div>" + Environment.NewLine + "<div>some  content</div>"

    'let's store the result in s1
    Dim s1 As String = Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(s, "</?div.*?>", String.Empty)

    'output
    MessageBox.Show(s1)

Output:

Answered By - Calaf