Stripping html tags from text

Spondishy · Mar 6, 2006

Hi,

I'm looking for help with a regular expression and c#.

I want to remove all tags from a piece of html except the following.

<a>
<b>
<h1>
<h2>
<h3>

Also, <a> could be <a href="aa">aaa</a> etc.

Help would be appreciated, along with an explanation of the reg
expression created.

Thanks.

Kevin Spencer · Mar 6, 2006

HTML is complex. It would be better instead to say that you want to
*retrieve* *only* all of the following tags. That way, they are the only
tags the Regular Expression will have to look for.

The following will do this:

(?i)<\s*(a|br|h1|h2|h3)[^>]*>(?

[^<\r\n]+)(?=(?:<\/\1)|(?:\r?\n)))?

Note: Grouping is used in this Regular Expression. It groups the tag names
into Group 1, and the InnerText into Group 2, in case you need either of
these.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer

Presuming that God is "only an idea" -
Ideas exist.
Therefore, God exists.

m.posseth · Mar 6, 2006

i use this in VB

Private Function stripHTML(ByVal strHTML) As String

Dim objRegExp As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("<(.|\n)+?>")

Return objRegExp.Replace(strHTML, "")

End Function

so the regex System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("<(.|\n)+?>")

does the trick

so in C# it would be ( i am a VB coder so don`t shoot me )

private string stripHTML(object strHTML)

{

System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex objRegExp = new
System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("<(.|\n)+?>");

return objRegExp.Replace(strHTML, "");

}

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]

Kevin Spencer · Mar 6, 2006

The problem with that Regular Expression (in this case) is that it simply
matches all tags in the page. It doesn't match InnerText, as he requested,
and it matches end tags as separate matches. It is excellent for, for
example, stripping HTML tags from a page, but not for his requirements.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer

Presuming that God is "only an idea" -
Ideas exist.
Therefore, God exists.

m.posseth said:
i use this in VB

Private Function stripHTML(ByVal strHTML) As String

Dim objRegExp As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("<(.|\n)+?>")

Return objRegExp.Replace(strHTML, "")

End Function

so the regex System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("<(.|\n)+?>")

does the trick

so in C# it would be ( i am a VB coder so don`t shoot me )

private string stripHTML(object strHTML)

{

System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex objRegExp = new
System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("<(.|\n)+?>");

return objRegExp.Replace(strHTML, "");

}

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]

Spondishy said:

Hi,

I'm looking for help with a regular expression and c#.

I want to remove all tags from a piece of html except the following.

<a>
<b>
<h1>
<h2>
<h3>

Also, <a> could be <a href="aa">aaa</a> etc.

Help would be appreciated, along with an explanation of the reg
expression created.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

m.posseth · Mar 7, 2006

Oops

i just read "Stripping html tags from text" and missed the exclusion part

my code will convert
<html>
<head>
<body>
<table>
<tr><td>bla bla </td></tr>
</table>
</body>
</head>
</html>

into

bla bla

regards

Michel

Kevin Spencer said:
The problem with that Regular Expression (in this case) is that it simply
matches all tags in the page. It doesn't match InnerText, as he requested,
and it matches end tags as separate matches. It is excellent for, for
example, stripping HTML tags from a page, but not for his requirements.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
.Net Developer

Presuming that God is "only an idea" -
Ideas exist.
Therefore, God exists.

m.posseth said:

i use this in VB

Private Function stripHTML(ByVal strHTML) As String

Dim objRegExp As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("<(.|\n)+?>")

Return objRegExp.Replace(strHTML, "")

End Function

so the regex System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("<(.|\n)+?>")

does the trick

so in C# it would be ( i am a VB coder so don`t shoot me )

private string stripHTML(object strHTML)

{

System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex objRegExp = new
System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("<(.|\n)+?>");

return objRegExp.Replace(strHTML, "");

}

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]

Spondishy said:

Hi,

I'm looking for help with a regular expression and c#.

I want to remove all tags from a piece of html except the following.

<a>
<b>
<h1>
<h2>
<h3>

Also, <a> could be <a href="aa">aaa</a> etc.

Help would be appreciated, along with an explanation of the reg
expression created.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

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Stripping html tags from text

Spondishy

Kevin Spencer

m.posseth

Kevin Spencer

m.posseth

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