Remove html markup from string

Question

I am reading in a field from the database and displaying in a GridView and in that field it contains <br/> tags in the text. So I am trying to remove these from the code but when I check the value of e.Row.Cells[index].Text it doesn't contain <br/> and is has ;br/> instead.

So I tried creating a function that removes any substring starting with < and ending with > or starting with & and ending with ;. The code removes the <> but it is still showing br/

Code:

index = gv.Columns.HeaderIndex("Message");
if (index > 0)
{
   string message = RemoveHTMLMarkup(e.Row.Cells[index].Text);
   e.Row.Cells[index].Text = message;
}

static string RemoveHTMLMarkup(string text)
{
        return Regex.Replace(Regex.Replace(text, "<.+?>", string.Empty), "&.+?;", string.Empty);
}

How do I remove the <br/> tag?

Answer 1

Since this is a literal string, you (sh|c)ould only use String.Replace():

static string RemoveHTMLNewLines(string text)
{
    return text.Replace("<br/>", string.Empty);
}

Or replace with Environment.NewLine if needed.

Answer 2

1. De-entitize the string.
2. Then use regex to to find and remove expected tags.

Or

If you have enough time to study and Use, then use HtmlAgilityPack package.

About HtmlAgilityPack

Nuget Package Link

Answer 3

Being regardless of the question, I am curious about what this is: