HREF Tags - to - Text Demo

This demo illustrates how to use regular expressions to convert HREF tags into text tags. The below page is a saved version of the HTML from http://www.asp.net/. Note the "links" on the left hand column, for instance. They are HTML hyperlinks on the ASP.NET page, but here, I have used regular expressions to turn them into text links with the following format: URL Description [URL].

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Source Code 
<%
  Dim strFileName 
  strFileName = Server.MapPath("/demos/asp.net.html")

  Dim objFSO, objTS, strHTML
  Set objFSO = Server.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
  Set objTS = objFSO.OpenTextFile(strFileName)
  strHTML = objTS.ReadAll
  objTS.Close
  Set objTS = Nothing
  Set objFSO = Nothing

  Dim objRegExp
  Set objRegExp = new RegExp

  'Assume strHTML contains the HTML with the <a href="<i>URL</i>"><i>URL Description</i></a>
  'We want to store into strText the HTML in strHTML, but with the HREF tags
  'changed to a more text-friendly <i>URL Description</i> [<i>URL</i>]
  objRegExp.IgnoreCase = True
  objRegExp.Global = True
  objRegExp.Pattern = "<a\s+href=""http://(.*?)"">\s*((\n|.)+?)\s*</a>"

  'Now, replace the HREF tags with our preferred format
  strText = objRegExp.Replace(strHTML, "$2 [http://$1]")
  Response.Write(strText)

  Set objRegExp = Nothing
%>

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