preg_replace() - removing a string contained within html tags

Question

I want to do the following:

I have a string in a database, it is stored with html tags when being inserted there, so for example, I might have the following string:

     <h2>Hello World</h2>
     <p>Cras mattis justo vitae diam sagittis ut porta eros aliquam. 
        Aenean vel nisi et nisl adipiscing blandit. 
        Donec tempor dictum risus a feugiat. 
        Nunc ac purus lectus. Morbi in suscipit ipsum. 
        Ut eu odio eu massa sollicitudin interdum. 
        Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. 
        Maecenas fermentum hendrerit imperdiet.</p>

This is a string I might have in the database, and I want to discard the <h2> part of it.

Now, as far as I know, doing a preg_replace() here, would do the job, but what string pattern do I need to look for?

Many thanks.

Parsing might be better then replacing: simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net — jantimon
– jantimon, Commented Jul 4, 2011 at 14:59
If your HTML is relatively simple, a regex might be able to cope with it. For general HTML, though you should look into using a parser instead of a regex to deal with it: stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/… — tvanfosson
– tvanfosson, Commented Jul 4, 2011 at 14:59
@tomalak: you stalk me really. anyway just to contradict once again DRY: don't use simplehtmldom use a proper xml parser not one based on strings. — dynamic
– dynamic, Commented Jul 4, 2011 at 15:05
@yes123: DRY, as a principle, is a great idea in a locality. But relying on DRY for something that you might have explained somewhere, once upon a time, in a far-away answer to a far-away question is pretty useless without providing an URL. — Lightness Races in Orbit
– Lightness Races in Orbit, Commented Jul 4, 2011 at 15:07

borrible · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-04 15:07:18Z

1

See the Remove HTML Tags section on the linked site. E.g.

@<h2[^>]*?>.*?</h2>@siu

edited Jul 4, 2011 at 15:07

answered Jul 4, 2011 at 15:01

borrible

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Michael Wright · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-04 15:07:17Z

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To actually answer your question the replace method RegEx would be:

/<h2>(.+?)<\/h2>/

However, as the comments pointed out, this isn't the best method! :)

answered Jul 4, 2011 at 15:07

Michael Wright

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Asraful · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-05 09:54:08Z

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Nice by Michael Wright.

Another way to solve this problem using strip_tags() function.

  $patern = '<p>';
  $str = '<h2>Hello World</h2><p>Cras mattis justo vitae diam .</p>';
  strip_tags($str,$patern);

This code generate the following output

 'Hello World<p>Cras mattis justo vitae diam .</p>'

Here $pattrn contain the tag list that still remain in you data. strip_tags() eliminates all tags except in $patern.

reference from php manual

edited Apr 5, 2013 at 9:54

Asraful

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answered Mar 26, 2013 at 5:06

Jakir Hosen Khan

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