Copy all text from webbrowser control

Question

Is it possible to scrape all the text from a site that was navigated to by WebBrowser control without looking at the source?

Solution 1

You use the DocumentText property or the WebBrowser control.

This property is what holds the HTML of the site you have navigated to.

Update: (following comments)

If you want to parse the HTML and get the text parts of it, I suggest you use the HTML Agility Pack.

Solution 2

David Walker's method is great when one don't need any info from the header nor non main part of the webpage. if one need something outside inner text, there is only two options, one is to parse with "getElement". the other one is issue commands (Document.ExecCommand) to webbrowser to select all and copy to clipboard:

wb.Document.ExecCommand("SelectAll", false, null);
wb.Document.ExecCommand("Copy", false, null);

then finally string content=clipboard.getText();

Please note the spelling and syntax may not be correct, I'm recalling from my memory

Solution 3

string browserContents = webBrowser.Document.Body.InnerText;

Comments

[Alex Gordon]

oded, i do not want to look at the html, i only want to look at the text that the user sees

[Alex Gordon]

no i dont want to parse the html, i just want the same result as if you hit ctrl A and copy and paste all the text

[Oded]

Um. That's what you will get by parsing the HTML.

[Skyfish]

Thanks for putting me onto the scent David. If you want to preserve the formatting like I do, use webBrowser.Document.Body.InnerHtml;