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Getting InnerText ignoring script node by using Html Agility Pack in C#

I have following page from which I want to get a list of proxy servers from a table:
http://proxy-list.org/spanish/search.php?search=&country=any&type=any&port=any&ssl=any
Each row in the table is an ul element. My problem is when obtaining the first li element which associated class is "proxy" from the ul element. I want to obtain the IP and Port so I perform an InnerText but as li element has an script child node, it returns the text of the script node.
Below an image of the structure of the page:
I have tried below code using Html Agility Pack and LINQ:
WebClient webClient = new WebClient();
string page = webClient.DownloadString("http://proxy-list.org/spanish/search.php?search=&country=any&type=any&port=any&ssl=any");
HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument();
doc.LoadHtml(page);
List<List<string>> table = doc.DocumentNode.SelectSingleNode("//div[#class='table']")
.Descendants("ul")
.Where(ul => ul.Elements("li").Count() > 1)
.Select(ul => ul.Elements("li").Select(li =>
{
string result = string.Empty;
if (li.HasClass("proxy"))
{
HtmlNode liTmp = li.Clone();
liTmp.RemoveAllChildren();
result = liTmp.InnerText.Trim();
}
else
{
result = li.InnerText.Trim();
}
return result;
}).ToList()).ToList();
I can obtain a list which each item is a list containing the fields (Proxy, País, Tipo, Velocidad, HTTPS/SSL) but field proxy is always empty. Also I am not getting at all the "País" and "Ciudad" columns.

That is because those values are injected into the DOM by JavaScript after page load. Actually the value inside the Proxy() is a Base64 representation of what you are looking for.
In the image you have posted above the value MTQ4LjI0My4zNy4xMDE6NTMyODE= decodes to 148.243.37.101:53281
The raw parsed string you are feeding to the Agility pack only contains the Proxy field...
<div class=\ "table-wrap\">\r\n
<div class=\ "table\">\r\n
<ul>\r\n
<li class=\ "proxy\">
<script type=\ "text/javascript\">
Proxy('MTM4Ljk3LjkyLjI0OTo1MzgxNg==')
</script>
</li>\r\n
<li class=\ "https\">HTTP</li>\r\n
<li class=\ "speed\">29.5kbit</li>\r\n
<li class=\ "type\">
<strong>Elite</strong>
</li>\r\n
<li class=\ "country-city\">\r\n
<div>\r\n
<span class=\ "country\" title=\ "Brazil\">
<span class=\ "country-code\">
<span class=\ "flag br\"></span>
<span class=\ "name\">BR Brasil</span>
</span>
</span>
<!--\r\n -->
<span class=\ "city\">
<span>Rondon</span>
</span>\r\n </div>\r\n </li>\r\n </ul>\r\n
<div class=\ "clear\"></div>\r\n
Using the following code:
HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
var docResult = client.GetStringAsync("http://proxy-list.org/spanish/search.php?search=&country=any&type=any&port=any&ssl=any").Result;
HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
doc.LoadHtml(docResult);
Regex reg = new Regex(#"Proxy\('(?<value>.*?)'\)", RegexOptions.Compiled | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
var stuff = doc.DocumentNode.SelectSingleNode("//div[#class='table']")
.Descendants("li")
.Where(x => x.HasClass("proxy"))
.Select(li =>
{
return li.InnerText;
}).ToList();
foreach (var item in stuff)
{
var match = reg.Match(item);
var proxy = Encoding.Default.GetString(System.Convert.FromBase64String(match.Groups["value"].Value));
Console.WriteLine($"{item}\t\tproxy = {proxy}");
}
I get:

html agility pack getting same output twice c#

<div class="header">
<span id="content">test1</span>
</div>
<div class="header">
<span id="content">test2</span>
</div>
var web = new HtmlWeb();
var doc = web.Load(url)
var value = doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//div[#class='header']")
foreach(var v in value)
{
var name = v.SelectSingleNode("//span[#id='content']")
Console.Writeline(name.OuterHtml);
}
the code above gives me as output twice <span id="content">test1</span>instead of <span id="content">test2</span> as second output. So it gets the correct number of nodes but not the correct output.

Using // and / in XPath will query the root node even you are using the current node.
Please see my fix in your code.
var value = doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//div[#class='header']");
foreach (var v in value)
{
var name = v.SelectSingleNode("span[#id='content']");
Console.WriteLine(name.OuterHtml);
}
See this fiddle. https://dotnetfiddle.net/nih2lw
A side note, id attribute should always be unique in the document. Use class instead.

How to get href elements and attributes for each node?

I am working on a project that should read html, and find find all nodes that match a value, then find elements and attributes of the located nodes.
I am having difficulty figuring out how to get the href attributes and elements though.
I am using HTMLAgilityPack.
I have numerous nodes of
class="middle"
throughout the html. I need to get all of them, and from them, get the href element and attributes. Below is a sample of the html:
<div class="top">
<div class="left">
<a href="item123">
<img src="url.png" border="0" />
</a>
</div>
</div>
<div class="middle">
<div class="title">Captains Hat</div>
<div class="day">monday</div>
<div class="city">Tuscon, AZ | 100 Days | <script typs="text/javascript">document.write(ts_to_age_min(1445620427));</script></div>
</div>
I have been able to get the other attributes I need, but not for 'href'.
Here is the code I have:
List<string> listResults = new List<string>();
var doc = new HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument();
doc.LoadHtml(url);
//get each listing
foreach (HtmlNode node in doc.DocumentNode.Descendants("div").Where(d =>
d.Attributes.Contains("class") && d.Attributes["class"].Value.Contains("middle")))
{
string day = node.SelectSingleNode(".//*[contains(#class,'day')]").InnerHtml;
string city = node.SelectSingleNode(".//*[contains(#class,'city')]").InnerHtml;
string item = node.SelectSingleNode("//a").Attributes["href"].Value;
listResults.Add(day + EnvironmentNewline
+ city + EnvironmentNewline
+ item + EnvironmentNewline + EnvironmentNewline)
}
My code above though is giving me the first href value for the whole html page though, and is giving it for each node for some reason (visible by outputting the list to a messagebox). I thought being in my foreach loop that using SelectSingleNode should get the first href attribute for that specific node. If so, why am I getting the first href attribute for the whole html page loaded?
I've been going through lots of threads on here about getting href values with HTLMAgilityPack, but I haven't been able to get this to work.
How can I get the href attribute and elements for each node I'm selecting based off the class attribute (class="middle")?

Try replacing
string item = node.SelectSingleNode("//a").Attributes["href"].Value;
with
string item = node.SelectSingleNode(".//a").Attributes["href"].Value;
Other than that, code above works for me.
Alternatively:
string item = node.SelectSingleNode(".//*[contains(#class,'title')]")
.Descendants("a").FirstOrDefault().Attributes["href"].Value;

XPath giving different results in browser and HtmlAgilityPack

I am attempting to parse a section of a webpage using HtmlAgilityPack in a C# program. Below is a simplified version of this section of the page (edited 1/30/2015 2:40PM EST):
<html>
<body>
<div id="main-box">
<div>
<div>...</div>
<div>
<div class="other-classes row-box">
<div>...</div>
<div>...</div>
<div>
<p>
<a href="/some/other/path">
<img src="/path/to/img" />
</a>
</p>
<p>
...
Correct extra text
</p>
</div>
<div>
...
<p>
<ul>
...
<li>
<span>
Never Selected
and Never Selected.
</span>
</li>
</ul>
</p>
</div>
...
</div>
<div class="other-classes row-box">
<div>...</div>
<div>...</div>
<div>
<p>
No "a" tag this time
</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>
<ul>
<li>
<span>
<span style="display:none;">
Never Selected
</span>
</span>
</li>
<li>
<span>
Correct
and Wrongly Selected.
</span>
</li>
</ul>
</p>
</div>
...
</div>
<div class="other-classes row-box">
<div>...</div>
<div>...</div>
<div>
<p>
<span>
Correct
</span>
</p>
<p>
...
Wrongly Selected extra text
</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>
<ul>
...
<li>
<span>
Never Selected
and Never Selected.
</span>
</li>
</ul>
</p>
</div>
...
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
I am attempting to get the first and only the first "a" tag with the GET parameter "a" in the 3rd or 4th child div of each div with the class "row-box" (the ones with the the word "Correct" in them in the above example). I came up with the following XPath that gets these nodes and only these nodes in both Chrome's inspector and the Firepath add-on for Firefox (wrapped for legibility):
//div[#id="main-box"]/div/div[2]/div[contains(#class, "row-box")]/div[
(position() = 3 or position() = 4) and descendant::a[
contains(#href, "a=")
]
][1]/descendant::a[contains(#href, "a=")][1]
However, when I load this page using HttpWebRequest, load the response stream into an HtmlDocument object, and call SelectNodes(xpath) on its DocumentNode property using this XPath, it returns not only the three correct nodes, but also the two tags with the text "Wrongly Selected" in the example above. I noticed that this is effectively the same as if I were to use the XPath above, except without the last "[1]", like this (wrapped for legibility):
//div[#id="main-box"]/div/div[2]/div[contains(#class, "row-box")]/div[
(position() = 3 or position() = 4) and descendant::a[
contains(#href, "a=")
]
][1]/descendant::a[contains(#href, "a=")]
I have made sure that I am using the latest version of HtmlAgilityPack, attempted several variations on my XPath to determine if maybe it was hitting some arbitrary maximum length or other simple issues like that, and tried to research similar issues without success. I tried throwing together an even simpler HTML structure using the same basic concept to test, but couldn't reproduce the issue with that, so I suspect that it may be some subtle issue with how HtmlAgilityPack parses something in this structure.
If anyone knows what might cause this issue, or has a better way to write an XPath expression that will get the correct nodes and hopefully not cause issues in HtmlAgilityPack, I would be greatly appreciative.
EDIT
As suggested, here is a simplified version of the C# code I'm using, which I have confirmed does reproduce the problem for me.
using System;
using System.Net;
using HtmlAgilityPack;
...
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string url = "http://www.deerso.com/test.html";
string xpath = "//div[#id=\"main-box\"]/div/div[2]/div[contains(#class, \"row-box\")]/div[(position() = 3 or position() = 4) and descendant::a[contains(#href, \"a=\")]][1]/descendant::a[contains(#href, \"a=\")][1]";
int statusCode;
string htmlText;
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(url);
request.Accept = "text/html,*/*";
request.Proxy = new WebProxy();
request.UserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:35.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0";
using (var response = (WebResponse)request.GetResponse())
{
statusCode = (int)((HttpWebResponse)response).StatusCode;
using (var stream = response.GetResponseStream())
{
if (stream != null)
{
using (var reader = new System.IO.StreamReader(stream))
{
htmlText = reader.ReadToEnd();
}
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("Request to '{0}' failed, response stream was null", url);
htmlText = null;
return;
}
}
}
HtmlNode.ElementsFlags.Remove("form"); //fix for forms
HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
doc.LoadHtml(htmlText);
HtmlNodeCollection nodes = doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes(xpath);
foreach (HtmlNode node in nodes)
{
Console.WriteLine("Node Found:");
Console.WriteLine("Text: {0}", node.InnerText);
Console.WriteLine("Href: {0}", node.Attributes["href"].Value);
Console.WriteLine();
}
Console.WriteLine("Done!");
}

New answer based on updated Html
We can't use the //a[contains(#href,'a=')][1] filter since that is selecting the first <a> element from its direct parent.
We need to add brackets to include the descendant operator in the filter, i.e.
(//a[contains(#href,'a=')])[1]
However, if we expand that to apply the first descendant filter to each node in another nodeset, the resultant xpath expression is invalid:
//div[contains(#class,'row-box')](//a[contains(#href,'a=')])[1]
I think we need to break it into two steps:
Get the group of div elements containing the particular link we want.
Get the first descendant link element from each element in that group
In C# this looks like:
// Get the <div> elements we know are ancestors to the <a> elements we want
HtmlNodeCollection topDivs = doc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//a[contains(#href,'?a=')]/ancestor::div[contains(#class,'row-box')]");
// Create a new list to hold the <a> elements
List<HtmlNode> linksWeWant = new List<HtmlNode>(topDivs.Count)
// Iterate through the <div> elements and get the first descendant
foreach(var div in topDivs)
{
linksWeWant.Add(div.SelectSingleNode("(//a[contains(#href,'?a=')])[1]"));
}
Old Answer
Using this page as a guide I put together the xpath expression:
When I run it in HtmlAgilityPack I'm getting only these three elements returned:
<a href = "/test/path?a=123">
<a href = "/test/path?a=abc&b=123">
<a href = "/test/path?a=ghi">
Here's a breakdown of the expression:
//div[contains(#class,'row-box')] -> Get nodeset of <div class="*row-box*"> elements
/descendant::a -> From here get all descendant <a> elements
[contains(#href,'a=') and position()=1] -> Filter according to href value and element being the first descendant
I believe the key difference to the xpath in your question is /descendant::a[contains(#href,'a=') and position()=1] vs /descendant::a[contains(#href,'a=')][1]. Applying the [1] separately is filtering as the first child instead of the first descendant.

I am attempting to get the first and only the first "a" tag with the GET parameter "a" in the 3rd or 4th child div of each div with the class "row-box"
I don't think such a query is possible in a single XPath expression. It would be quite easy in XQuery:
for $rowBox in //div[contains(#class, 'row-box')]
let $firstRelevant := ($rowBox/div[
(position() = 3 or position() = 4)
and .//a[contains(#href, 'a=')]
])[1]
return ($firstRelevant//a[contains(#href, 'a=')])[1]
But the amount of predicate grouping (i.e. (...)[...]) that is going on here exceeds the expressive capabilities of XPath.
Selecting the result in multiple steps in C# would be the way to go, in much the same way XQuery does it:
for each //div[contains(#class, 'row-box')]:
select ./div[(position() = 3 or position() = 4) and .//a[contains(#href, 'a=')]
for the first one:
select .//a[contains(#href, 'a=')]
take the first one

Count specific child nodes with HtmlAgilityPack

I have lot of trouble with this XPath selction that i use in HtmlAgilityPack.
I want to select all li elements (if they exist) nested in another li witch have a tag with id="menuItem2".
This is html sample:
<div id="menu">
<ul>
<li><a id="menuItem1"></a></li>
<li><a id="menuItem2"></a>
<ul>
<li><a id="menuSubItem1"></a></li>
<li><a id="menuSubItem2"></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a id="menuItem3"></a></li>
</ul>
</div>
this is XPath that i been using. When i lose this part /ul/li, it gets me the a tag that I wanted, but i need his descendants... This XPath always returns null.
string xpathExp = "//a[#id='" + parentIdHtml + "']/ul/li";
HtmlNodeCollection liNodes = htmlDoc.DocumentNode.SelectNodes(xpathExp);

The following XPath should work.
string xpathExp = "//li/a[#id='" + parentIdHtml + "']/following-sibling::ul/li";

Try this for your xpath:
string xpathExp = "//li[a/#id='" + parentIdHtml + "']/ul/li";
The problem is that you were select the a node itself, which has no ul children. You need to select the li node first, and filter on its a child.

XPath is so messy. You're using the HtmlAgilityPack, you might as well leverage the LINQ.
//find the li -- a *little* complicated with nested Where clauses, but clear enough.
HtmlNode li = htmlDoc.DocumentNode.Descendants("li").Where(n => n.ChildNodes.Where(a => a.Name.Equals("a") && a.Id.Equals("menuItem2", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)).Count() > 0).FirstOrDefault();
IEnumerable<HtmlNode> liNodes = null;
if (li != null)
{
//Node found, get all the descendent <li>
liNodes = li.Descendants("li");
}

From your description I think you want to select the two <li> elements that contain <a> tags with ids menuSubItem1 and menuSubItem2?
If so then this is what you need
//li[a/#id="menuItem2"]//li