How To Make A Lyrics Fetcher In VB.NET

Description of the program : You can get the lyrics of songs with the artist name & the song name from this program.

 As usual just create a new fresh project and add the following tools to your form

• 2 Buttons
• 2 TextBoxes
• 1 RichTextBox
• 1 SaveFileDialog

Usage of the tools that you have added(Don't forget to change the buttons text : 

1. Button1 - Fetch
2. Button2 - Save
3. TextBox1 - Artist Name
4. TextBox2 - Song Name
5. RichTextBox1 - Lyrics

You have to add System.Web reference, select add reference from project menu then search for it and click ok :

Now arrange your tools as you see in the following picture(add two labels for the TextBoxes)

First add these namespaces :

Imports System.Net
Imports System.Web.HttpUtility

Now coming to the main parts, we are using a function to parse the lyrics so first add this function to your codes

  Public Function ParseBetween(ByVal Html As String, ByVal Before As String, ByVal After As String, ByVal Offset As Integer) As String
        If String.IsNullOrEmpty(Html) Then Return String.Empty
        If Html.Contains(Before) Then
            Dim Result As String = Html.Substring(Html.IndexOf(Before) + Offset)
            If Result.Contains(After) AndAlso Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(After) Then Result = Result.Substring(0, Result.IndexOf(After))
            Return Result
        Else
            Return String.Empty
        End If
    End Function

Next double click the Button1(Button fetch) and add the following codes :

   If Not String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Textbox1.Text) AndAlso Not String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Textbox2.Text) Then
            Try
                Dim src As String = New WebClient().DownloadString(New Uri(String.Format("http://www.songlyrics.com/{0}/{1}-lyrics/", Textbox1.Text.Replace(" ", "-"), Textbox2.Text.Replace(" ", "-"))))
                Dim elyrics As String = ParseBetween(src, "

", "
", "

".Length).Replace(vbCrLf, "").Replace("
", vbCrLf)
                Richtextbox1.Text = HtmlDecode(elyrics).Replace(Environment.NewLine, "")
                Richtextbox1.SelectAll()
                Richtextbox1.SelectionAlignment = HorizontalAlignment.Center
            Catch ex As Exception
                If ex.Message.Contains("404") Then Richtextbox1.Text = "Lyrics not found"
            End Try
        Else
            MessageBox.Show("Enter song name & artist name to get the lyrics", "Information Missing", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Asterisk)
        End If

At last double click your save button and add the following codes to the click event

 'Defining the savefiledialog1 and using the richtextbox plaintext to save the lyrics without messing up the text
        Dim savedialog As New SaveFileDialog
        savedialog.Title = "Save As..."
        savedialog.Filter = "Text Files (*.txt)|*.txt|All Files (*.*)|*.*"
        If savedialog.ShowDialog = Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK Then
            richtextBox1.SaveFile(savedialog.FileName, RichTextBoxStreamType.PlainText)
        End If

That's all you just created your own Lyrics Fetcher, here is a working preview :

I hope you enjoyed making this program :)