13

Before we start, strip_tags() doesn't work.

now,

I've got some data that needs to be parsed, the problem is, I need to get rid of all the HTML that has been formated very strangely. the tags look like this: (notice the spaces)

< p > blah blah blah < / p > < a href= " link.html " > blah blah blah < /a >

All the regexs I've been trying aren't working, and I don't know enough about regex formating to make them work. I don't care about preserving anything inside of the tags, and would prefer to get rid of the text inside a link if I could.

Anyone have any idea?

(I really need to just sit down and learn regular expressions one day)

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6 Answers 6

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35

Does

preg_replace('/<[^>]*>/', '', $content)

work?

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1 Comment

Instead of * you could use +, because with * you will also replace <> if found in text.
17

strip_tags() will work if you use html_entity_decode() on a variable before strip_tags()

<?php
$text = '< p > blah blah blah < / p > < a href= " link.html " > blah blah blah< /a >';
echo strip_tags(html_entity_decode($text));
?>
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2

Solution which isn't fool-proof, but will work for what you posted:

s/<[^>]*>//g
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1

Formatted strangely? That is valid HTML though right? In that case I wouldn't touch it with regular expressions. Examples of how this can go wrong and why it's a bad idea are legion. Instead I'd use HTML Tidy on it to, for example, clean up unnecessary white-space.

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2 Comments

I was going to post this, but was too tired to word it intelligibly. +1.
When I run the string through HTML Tidy it changes the < and > signs to < and > so strip_tags() still wont work on those. I was using both tidy_parse_string() and tidy_repair_string(). Is there another function that will work that I don't see?
-2

https://www.php.net/strip_tags is probably what you need.

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1 Comment

strip_tags() doesn't work (as noted by the first line of my question) because PHP doesn't recognize the tags as HTML due to the formating. That was my first thought as well.
-2

Try this out and let me know. 

<?php
$text = '< p > blah blah blah < / p > < a href= " link.html " > blah blah blah< /a >';
echo strip_tags($text);
echo "\n";
echo strip_tags($text, '<p><a>');
?>
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3 Comments

strip_tags() doesn't work (as noted by the first line of my question) because PHP doesn't recognize the tags as HTML. That was my first thought as well.
Did you add that later? I totally missed out on that...Did you try using preg_replace?
nope, the post hasn't been edited at all. I was asking about the regex I could use. chaos' answer is most likely the one I'll end up using, but if I could use tidy html to clean up the code then use strip_tags that would fine, but I can't find a function in tidy html that does what I need; hence why I haven't checked chaos' answer. :)

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