Question for my VB guru crew!

[JPnyc]

If you wanted to write an app, to just convert text that is contained between a < and a > from upper to lower case, how would you go about it? Would you use regexp or are there VB methods better suited? Thanks guys.

[visualAd]

Are you trying to convert HTML 4.0 to XHTML? - If so then you can use the w3c's Tidy tool. If you don't want to use that then yes, you would use a regular expression. I haven't got the time right now, but if you want me to write a small PHP script, I'll do it a bit later. Shouldn't take long, I once wrote something very similar which finds and lists all the Urls on a web page.

P.s: why didn't you want to post this in the main forum?

[JPnyc]

Yeah that tool would do it, LOL thanks. I would've enjoyed writing it though, as this job really doesn't ever bring me in contact with VB, and I found VB a lot of fun, what little time I spent with it. It's almost to programming what doing a comedy is to acting. It's just plain more fun.

[plenderj]

Am in work at present, but if you give me a few hours I'll write an app for you to do it. Easiest probably;

Split() text by "<"
Loop through array and make letters in string lower case
Join() array by "<"

[Wokawidget]

Option Explicit
 
Private Const MY_DATA As String = "<b>Woof</b><div>Moose</div>"
 
Private Sub Command1_Click()
    MsgBox ChangeCase(MY_DATA, True)
End Sub
 
Private Function ChangeCase(ByVal pstrMyData As String, ByVal pblnUpperCase As Boolean) As String
Dim lngStart    As Long
Dim lngEnd      As Long
Dim strMyData   As String
Dim strText     As String
    strMyData = pstrMyData
    Do
        lngStart = InStr(lngEnd + 1, strMyData, "<")
        If lngStart > 0 Then
            lngEnd = InStr(lngStart + 1, strMyData, ">")
            If lngEnd > 0 Then
                strText = Mid$(strMyData, lngStart, lngEnd - lngStart)
                If pblnUpperCase Then
                    strText = UCase$(strText)
                Else
                    strText = LCase$(strText)
                End If
                Mid$(strMyData, lngStart, lngEnd - lngStart) = strText
            End If
        End If
    Loop Until (lngStart = 0 Or lngEnd = 0)
    ChangeCase = strMyData
End Function

Hope that help.

Woof

[MartinLiss]

Dim intStart As Integer
    Dim IntEnd As Integer
    Const TEST_DATA As String = "ThiS <iS a SIMPLE> A tEst"
    
    intStart = InStr(TEST_DATA, "<")
    IntEnd = InStr(TEST_DATA, ">")
    
    MsgBox LCase(Mid$(TEST_DATA, intStart + 1, IntEnd - intStart - 1))

Jamie, I don't think Split would work in this case because how would you know which piece of the split output contained the "<" to begin with?

[Wokawidget]

Marty, where's your looping in case there is more than 1 set of <>'s?



Woka

[MartinLiss]

If that's what the data requires then you're absolutely right.

[JPnyc]

Hey thanks all, but the tool that was mentioned would do it fine. I just wanted the fun of having a reason to write something in VB. I stink at coming up with my own reasons to. Also tough to find the time when you can't convince yourself it's really necessary.

[visualAd]

Hey thanks all, but the tool that was mentioned would do it fine. I just wanted the fun of having a reason to write something in VB. I stink at coming up with my own reasons to. Also tough to find the time when you can't convince yourself it's really necessary.

Sorry to spoil your fun - But I guess if you prefer a GUI then it is something that can be done in VB.

You'll notice on the tidy site that someone has compiled a dll with the tidy API, so one could use this library and a few API calls to make an application in VB.

[plenderj]

Dim intStart As Integer
    Dim IntEnd As Integer
    Const TEST_DATA As String = "ThiS <iS a SIMPLE> A tEst"
    
    intStart = InStr(TEST_DATA, "<")
    IntEnd = InStr(TEST_DATA, ">")
    
    MsgBox LCase(Mid$(TEST_DATA, intStart + 1, IntEnd - intStart - 1))

Jamie, I don't think Split would work in this case because how would you know which piece of the split output contained the "<" to begin with?

Try it

Dim strText As String = "blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> "
        Dim strArr() As String = Split(strText, "<")
        Dim i As Integer
        For i = 0 To UBound(strArr)
            strArr(i) = LCase(strArr(i))
        Next
        MsgBox(Join(strArr, "<"))

[JPnyc]

That's some really efficient code there man, I'm impressed. I think I will give that a try, soon as I load Visual Studio on this PC (it's brand spanking new). Grazie!

[MartinLiss]

Try it

Dim strText As String = "blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> "
        Dim strArr() As String = Split(strText, "<")
        Dim i As Integer
        For i = 0 To UBound(strArr)
            strArr(i) = LCase(strArr(i))
        Next
        MsgBox(Join(strArr, "<"))

Ignoring the fact that your Dim statements are invalid , my point which I apparently didn't make was that unless you know where the "<" symbols were to begin with, your code would change everything to lower case so you might as well just do

strText = LCase(strText)

[visualAd]

In XHTML the only parts of the tag which must be lower case are the tags names and attributes, hence:

<A HREF="value" ID="value" TABORDER=1>

Must change to:

<a href="value" id="value" taborder="1">

All attribute vlaues must also be in quotes

[visualAd]

I'm sure someone could change this to make it shorter. - but it does what the previous post says it should.

Function LCaseTags(ByVal str)
    Dim InTag As Boolean
    Dim InAttributeValue As Boolean
    Dim LookForSpace As Boolean
    
    Dim IntLen As Long
    
    Dim x As Long
    
    Dim StrReturn As String
    Dim Char As String * 1
    
    IntLen = Len(str)
    
    InTag = False
    InAtrributeValue = False
    LookForSpace = False
    nextchar = vbNullString
    
    For x = 1 To IntLen
        Char = Mid(str, x, 1)
        
        If Char = "<" Then
            InTag = True
        ElseIf Char = ">" Then
            If LookForSpace Then
                StrReturn = StrReturn & """"
                
                LookForSpace = False
                InAttributeValue = False
            End If
            
            InTag = False
        ElseIf InTag Then
            If nextchar <> vbNullString And Char <> nextchar Then
                StrReturn = StrReturn & """"
                nextchar = vbNullString
                
                LookForSpace = True
                InAttributeValue = True
            End If
            
            If LookForSpace And IsSpace(Char) Then
                InAttributeValue = False
                LookForSpace = False
                
                StrReturn = StrReturn & """"
            ElseIf Char = """" Then
                If InAttributeValue Then
                    InAttributeValue = False
                Else
                    InAttributeValue = True
                End If
            ElseIf Char = "=" Then
                nextchar = """"
            ElseIf IsUpper(Char) Then
                If Not InAttributeValue Then
                    Char = LCase(Char)
                End If
            End If
        End If
        
        StrReturn = StrReturn & Char
    Next x
    
    LCaseTags = StrReturn
End Function
 
Function IsUpper(ByVal str As String) As Boolean
    str = Left$(str, 1)
    
    IsUpper = (Asc(str) >= Asc("A")) And (Asc(str) <= Asc("Z"))
End Function
 
Function IsSpace(ByVal str As String) As Boolean
    Dim whitespace(4) As String
    Dim x As Integer
 
    whitespace(0) = " "
    whitespace(1) = vbCr
    whitespace(2) = vbLf
    whitespace(2) = Chr(9)
    
    For x = 0 To 2
        If whitespace(x) = str Then
            IsSpace = True
            
            Exit Function
        End If
    Next x
    
    IsSpace = False
End Function

[Wokawidget]

Jamie...your code changes all text to lower case. ie:

<B>WOOF</B>

Would be changed too:

<b>woof</b>

VisualAd...yea it can be done shorter...look at my code

Woka

[JPnyc]

I believe in XHTML that tag names, attr. names and values must all be lower case. The validator kicks back BORDER but not border.

[visualAd]

Yes, that and all single tags such as IMG an BR must have a terminator. IMG tags are also required to have an alt attribute. All these and the other other differences are taken care of by the tidy tool.

<img src="img.gif" alt="Alternate text" /> 
<br />

[Wokawidget]

I agree.

Jamie...your code:

Dim strText As String = "blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> "
        Dim strArr() As String = Split(strText, "<")
        Dim i As Integer
        For i = 0 To UBound(strArr)
            strArr(i) = LCase(strArr(i))
        Next
        MsgBox(Join(strArr, "<"))

does exactly the same thing as:

Dim strText As String = "blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> blah <sOmEtAg>blah></someTAg> "
        strText = strText.ToLower

Since this is .NET u shouldn't use LCase...

WOka

[Wokawidget]

Boooo...just realised my code changes:

<img src="Img.GIF"

To

<img src="img.gif"

I suck.
This isn't a problem on image tags but it is for certain others. Booooo.

Woka

[visualAd]

The code I wrote does the following:

• Converts all tag names and attribute names to lower case.
• Ensures attribute values are between dowuble quotes and adds them if they are not.
• Takes into account white spcae such as tabs spaces an new lines.

So it will convert:

<A HREF="value"
 naMe=VALUE
>HELLO
How are you</A>

To:

<a href="value"
 name="VALUE" 
>HELLO
How are you</a>

[plenderj]

Ignoring the fact that your Dim statements are invalid , my point which I apparently didn't make was that unless you know where the "<" symbols were to begin with, your code would change everything to lower case so you might as well just do

strText = LCase(strText)

I coded that in VB.NET
Okay point taken... but that could be remedied by Split()'ing each array index using > and then modifying that...