javascript remove html tags but not content within them and not <a > tags with regex

Question

how to remove all tags in a string but not <a>? and not the text inside them?

For example: <em>Bold</em><a>Go here</a> should be: Bold<a>Go here</a>

Do you want to manipulate a string, or the DOM? Why do you tag regex? Depending on the first question, you may not need them. — cmbuckley
– cmbuckley, Commented Sep 4, 2015 at 14:37

Wiktor Stribiżew · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-04 14:43:02Z

2

You can remove all strings that look like <...> other than <a> or </a> with

<(?!\/?a>)[^>]*>

See demo

Do not forget to add a /i case insensitive modifier to also avoid matching <A>. If you do not plan to keep closing </a>, you can use <(?!a>)[^>]*>.

edited Sep 4, 2015 at 14:43

answered Sep 4, 2015 at 14:38

Wiktor Stribiżew

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1 Comment

Wiktor Stribiżew Over a year ago

I added optional \/? - I guess you wanted to also keep the closing tag, right? I also added the note with my previous regex.

num8er · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-04 14:39:59Z

1

Try this:

function strip_tags(input, allowed) {
  allowed = (((allowed || '') + '')
    .toLowerCase()
    .match(/<[a-z][a-z0-9]*>/g) || [])
    .join(''); // making sure the allowed arg is a string containing only tags in lowercase (<a><b><c>)
  var tags = /<\/?([a-z][a-z0-9]*)\b[^>]*>/gi,
    commentsAndPhpTags = /<!--[\s\S]*?-->|<\?(?:php)?[\s\S]*?\?>/gi;
  return input.replace(commentsAndPhpTags, '')
    .replace(tags, function($0, $1) {
      return allowed.indexOf('<' + $1.toLowerCase() + '>') > -1 ? $0 : '';
    });
}

var html = 'some html code';
html = strip_tags(html, '<a>');

source: http://phpjs.org/functions/strip_tags/

answered Sep 4, 2015 at 14:39

num8er

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