I need a regex to strip outer/top level HTML tags in a string but keep the internal ones.
$str = "<div>Start <br /> <span>test</span> end.</div>";
Into
$str = "Start <br /> <span>test</span> end.";
As well as
$str = "<aside id="main" class="one">Start <br /> <span>test</span> end.</aside>";
Into
$str = "Start <br /> <span>test</span> end.";
.
preg_replace('/<[^>]*>/', '', $str);
Removes all tags not just outer ones.
Please note
Using a regex is not the best way to modify HTML code! In most situations it is better and much more reliable to use a DOMDocument or DOMDocumentFragement object to modify or extract data from HTML code.
However, there are valid scenarios where a regex is better, mainly when these factors apply:
The code
To strip the outermost tag from some HTML code use this regex:
/* Note:
* The code must start with an opening tag and end with a closing tag.
* No white space or other text must be present before the first
* tag/after the last tag, else you get some unexpected results.
*/
$contents = preg_replace( '/^<[^>]+>|<\/[^>]+>$/', '', $markup );
// ^<[^>]+> This removes the first tag
// <\/[^>]+>$ This removes the last closing tag
Examples
This regex works for most HTML markup e.g.
In: '<div class="my-text" id="text" style="color:red">some text</div>'
Out: 'some text' (expected result)
When the first tag contains the ">" character it's going to break everything, e.g.
In: '<div title="Home > Archives">Archive overview</div>'
Out: ' Archives">Archive overview' (unexpected result)
Also whitespace/text in the start or end will break the regex
In: '<div>Your name</div>:'
Out: 'Your name</div>:' (unexpected result)
And of course, any tag will be stripped, without any sanity check, e.g.
In: '<h2>Settings</h2><label>Page Title</label>'
Out: 'Settings</h2><label>Page Title' (unexpected result)
How to take a DOM element, and simulate innerHTML()
$html = '<html><body><div><ul><li>1</li><li>2</li><li>3</li></ul></div></body></html>';
function DOMinnerHTML(DOMNode $element) {
$innerHTML = "";
foreach ($element->childNodes as $child) {
$innerHTML .= $element->ownerDocument->saveHTML($child);
}
return $innerHTML;
}
$doc = new DOMDocument();
$doc->loadHTML($html);
foreach ($doc->getElementsByTagName('ul') as $child) {
$html = DOMinnerHTML($child);
echo $html, PHP_EOL;
}
without having to resort to regexp
This basic regex will probably do. It does not, however, account for tags that have attributes that contain >s, and thus will trip.
Find: <[^>]*>([\s\S]*)<\/[^>]*>
Replace: $1
It gets more complex if you expect attributes may contain tag brackets.
Find: <(?:[^>]*?(?:(?:"[^"]*?"|'[^']*?')+[^>]*?)|[\s\S]*?)>([\s\S]*)<\/[^>]*>
Replace: $1
Either one should do the trick.
Warning: preg_replace(): Unknown modifier ']' on first regex.
<[^>]*>([\s\S]*)<\/[^>]*>I made a function that removes the HTML tags along with their contents:
Function:
<?php
function strip_tags_content($text, $tags = '', $invert = FALSE) {
preg_match_all('/<(.+?)[\s]*\/?[\s]*>/si', trim($tags), $tags);
$tags = array_unique($tags[1]);
if(is_array($tags) AND count($tags) > 0) {
if($invert == FALSE) {
return preg_replace('@<(?!(?:'. implode('|', $tags) .')\b)(\w+)\b.*?>.*?</\1>@si', '', $text);
}
else {
return preg_replace('@<('. implode('|', $tags) .')\b.*?>.*?</\1>@si', '', $text);
}
}
elseif($invert == FALSE) {
return preg_replace('@<(\w+)\b.*?>.*?</\1>@si', '', $text);
}
return $text;
}
?>
Sample text: $text = 'sample text with tags';
Result for strip_tags($text): sample text with tags
Result for strip_tags_content($text): text with
Result for strip_tags_content($text, ''): sample text with
Result for strip_tags_content($text, '', TRUE); text with tags
I hope that someone is useful :)
<div>bla <br> bla</div>and now i just need to strip the actual outer tag (div in this case) and keep the content with tags.$html = $domElement->ownerDocument->saveHTML($domElement);should return the content of the Dom node in $html without stripping the tags within it