Regex to remove <script> and its content in Javascript

Question

I am trying to remove scripts and their content from html body and this is what I have came up until now

just_text = just_text.replace(/<\s*script[^>]*>(<\s*\/script[^>]*>|$)/ig, '');

It does not work as want to, I still get the content.

Can you please help me?

Thank you

Did you consider using an HTML parser for this task instead of regular expressions? They're not well-suited to process HTML. — Frédéric Hamidi
– Frédéric Hamidi, Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 8:54
"remove scripts and their content from html body" Does this mean you are modifying the actual page and are not only having an HTML string? — Felix Kling
– Felix Kling, Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 8:57
@FelixKling I am only storing string content I am removing any tags — Marios Ledio Taso
– Marios Ledio Taso, Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 8:59
@Marios: HTML parsing and DOM manipulation capabilities are built into the browser, because that's what it does. — Felix Kling
– Felix Kling, Commented Jun 21, 2013 at 9:57

Felix Kling · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-21 09:05:27Z

6

The answer to such questions is always the same: Don't use regular expressions. Instead, parse the HTML, modify the DOM and serialize it back to HTML if you need to.

Example:

var container = document.createElement('div');
container.innerHTML = just_text;

// find and remove `script` elements
var scripts = container.getElementsByTagName('script');
for (var i = scripts.length; i--; ) {
    scripts[i].parentNode.removeChild(scripts[i]);
}

just_text = container.innerHTML;

If you want to remove the script tags from the page itself, it's basically the same:

var scripts = document.body.getElementsByTagName('script');
for (var i = scripts.length; i--; ) {
    scripts[i].parentNode.removeChild(scripts[i]);
}

answered Jun 21, 2013 at 9:05

Felix Kling

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3 Comments

georg Over a year ago

Correct answer, but I'm not sure I like i-- as a loop condition... Why not simply while(scripts.length) scripts[0].parentNode etc?

Felix Kling Over a year ago

@thg435: I had that first. Then I remembered that accessing .length reevaluates the NodeList (updates it) and I wanted to avoid that. So iterating over list in reverse order seemed to make the most sense (doesn't have to be with this loop setup, I just like it as shorthand). On the other hand, maybe accessing an element of the list (scripts[i]) reevaluates it as well and there is nothing gained through that anyway ;)

Marios Ledio Taso Over a year ago

@FelixKling useful answer but I needed a regex in that case big thank you though will certainly use this approach next time

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