Javascript Regex: Get HTML Tags

Question

I made this regex:

/\<+[a-zA-Z0-9\=\"\s]+\>+.+\<\/+[a-zA-Z0-9]+\>/gi

which matches a full html tag like:

<p>this is a paragraph</p>

But the problem with this that that it matches all of the elements as one match

<div><p>this is a paragraph</p></div>

But I would like to get all of the HTML elements separated.

Note: The HTML tags are in a string not in the DOM.

Before the regex solution I tried to create a new div element and I added the string as it's innerHTML. But doesn't worked properly I don't really know why...

So I'm looking for a REGEX solution which solves this one match problem.

Thanks

I thought that somebody will ask me for it :D But I'm really curious how my current question can be figured out :) — Adam Halasz
– Adam Halasz, Commented Apr 3, 2011 at 18:51
you can't parse HTML with regex. Using the browser's existing parser through innerHTML (or some similar mechanism) is actually the right solution. — Matthew Flaschen
– Matthew Flaschen, Commented Apr 4, 2011 at 14:15

Dancrumb · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-03 19:12:39Z

1

Replacing the inner +.+ with +[^<]+ would prevent it from matching the whole string, but regular expressions are not the correct choice for processing strings that contain nested components. For that you should be using a parser.

Regular expressions are simply the wrong tool for the job here.

answered Apr 3, 2011 at 19:12

Dancrumb

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Miquel · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-03 19:40:54Z

1

Regular expressions are not appropriate to handle html. As you mention that the HTML is not part of the DOM

Note: The HTML tags are in a string not in the DOM.

You can use JQuery to build an object from the HTML and use DOM selectors / traversion to work with it:

$(myHTMLString).find('p')...

answered Apr 3, 2011 at 19:40

Miquel

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