Copy and Paste HTML Content Using Clipboard in Windows Store Apps

In my previous article I showed you how to perform Clipboard operations on an image. Today we are going to see Clipboard operations on HTML content.

In this article I will show you how to perform Clipboard operations such as Copy and Paste of HTML content.

Performing Clipboard operations with HTML content is different from other types of formats such as text or a link as the HTML contents can contains links or images or other formats or may be a reference of other contents.

The following describes copying and pasting HTML content using the Clipboard.

Step 1

Create a Blank application of Windows Store apps using C#/XAML.

Step 2

First you need to add the appropriate namespaces in the MainPage.cs file to create HTML content; they are:

using Windows.ApplicationModel.DataTransfer;

using Windows.Data.Html;

Step 3

Now, I use Use the CreateHtmlFormat method of HtmlFormatHelper class that helps to prepare the HTML content correctly for Clipboard operations.

string htmlFormat = HtmlFormatHelper.CreateHtmlFormat(htmlfragment);

Step 4

Then, create the DataPackage object and add the HTML content to the DataPackage object, as in:

var dataPackage = new DataPackage();

dataPackage.SetHtmlFormat(htmlFormat);  

Step 5

Now set the content to the Clipboard by setting the object of the dataPackage to the Clipboard.

Here is the code of copying the Copy the content to the Clipboard:

private void copy_Click_1(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{ 

    // Set the content to DataPackage as html format

    string htmlFormat = HtmlFormatHelper.CreateHtmlFormat(htmlfragment);

    var dataPackage = new DataPackage();

    dataPackage.SetHtmlFormat(htmlFormat);          

    try

    {

       // Set the DataPackage to clipboard.

       Windows.ApplicationModel.DataTransfer.Clipboard.SetContent(dataPackage);

       Output.Text = "HTML formats have been copied to clipboard. ";

    }

    catch (Exception ex)

    {

       // Copying data to Clipboard can potentially fail - for example, if another application is holding Clipboard open

       Output.Text = "Copying data to Clipboard can potentially fail ";

    }

}

Step 6

After copying the HTML content to the Clipboard, now I will be going to paste it from the Clipboard.

The following sgows getting the content from the Clipboard, checking whether it contains the data or not, then showing this content in the WebView:

var dataPackageView = Windows.ApplicationModel.DataTransfer.Clipboard.GetContent();

Here is full code of paste HTML content from the Clipboard.
 

private async void paste_Click_1(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    var dataPackageView = Windows.ApplicationModel.DataTransfer.Clipboard.GetContent();        

    if (dataPackageView.Contains(StandardDataFormats.Html))

    {               

       string htmlFormat = null;

       try

      {

         htmlFormat = await dataPackageView.GetHtmlFormatAsync();

      }

      catch (Exception ex)

      {

        Output.Text= "Error retrieving HTML format from Clipboard: ";

      } 

      if (htmlFormat != null)

      {

        showContent.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;

        string htmlFragment = HtmlFormatHelper.GetStaticFragment(htmlFormat);

        showContent.NavigateToString("HTML:<br/ > " + htmlFragment);

        Output.Text = " HTML formats have been paste from clipboard. ";

      }

   }

   else

   {            

      showContent.NavigateToString("HTML:<br/ > HTML format is not available in clipboard");

   }
}

Step 7

Press F5 to run the application and see the output. Click on the Copy button to copy the WebvView content to the Clipboard.

Click on the Paste button to paste the content from the Clipboard.