Remove HTML from String?

Ruby
1

I can’t find a method to remove HTML from a string in the core API. PHP
has something called strip_tags. Does Ruby have anything like this?
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.strip-tags.php

2

A regular expression can strip the HTML tags from any string…

I use this

Get the html data in a string by any method

html_string = get_html_method

strip all the html tags from the html data

html_string.gsub!(/(<[^>]*>)|\n|\t/s) {" "}

this may not be the best way, (robust or fast) but is enough for my
needs.

Horacio

Monday 09 January 2006 17:38ã?jotto ã?ã??はæ?¸ãã¾ã?ã?:

3

On Jan 9, 2006, at 5:57 AM, Austin Z. wrote:

other respondent, it’s relatively easy to remove:

a.gsub(%r{</?[^>]+?>}, ‘’)

…just pray that the HTML you are modifying is valid, and not some
garbage file that web browsers happen to treat as intended. For
example, watch the above regexp go to town on some invalid HTML:

class String
def strip_tags
self.gsub( %r{</?[^>]+?>}, ‘’ )
end
end

source = <<ENDHTML

I'm pretending to know how to code. I <3 HTML, it's teh best!!!!

BLASTOFFS!!!! ENDHTML

puts source.strip_tags
#=> I’m pretending to know how to code. I
#=>
#=> for ( i=0; i’) }
#=>
#=> BLASTOFFS!!!

4

On 09/01/06, jotto [email protected] wrote:

I can’t find a method to remove HTML from a string in the core API. PHP
has something called strip_tags. Does Ruby have anything like this?
PHP: strip_tags - Manual

Not built in. It’s not really appropriate for the core language.
That’s one of the things that makes PHP easy to use for people who are
trying to do simple things, but makes it hard when you get into
engineering and maintaining real programs. As was suggested by the
other respondent, it’s relatively easy to remove:

a.gsub(%r{</?[^>]+?>}, ‘’)

-austin

5

If you’re concerned about prevent browsers from rendering the HTML in
your string, replacing < and > with < and > symbols is more
affective than trying to remove the tags.

~ ryan ~

6

On 09/01/06, Eric S. [email protected] wrote:

More like, “Just pray the HTML you are modifying doesn’t happen to be
completely valid, but not formed in exactly the way you are
expecting.” For instance, the following HTML snippet is completely
valid, but screws up the regex:

a > b

Actually, that is not completely valid, at least not valid XHTML
(which is what I use these days). You have to do that as:

a > b

But my regexp wasn’t intended to be complete; there are full libraries
out there for that.

-austin

7

Austin Z. [email protected] writes:

On 09/01/06, Eric S. [email protected] wrote:

More like, “Just pray the HTML you are modifying doesn’t happen to be
completely valid, but not formed in exactly the way you are
expecting.” For instance, the following HTML snippet is completely
valid, but screws up the regex:

a > b

Actually, that is not completely valid, at least not valid XHTML
(which is what I use these days).

When wrapped with the appropriate tags, it validated HTML 4.01, which
is what I recommend most people generate these days (because of some,
but not all, of the reasons elucidated at
Coding In Paradise: XHTML Considered Harmful).
So yes, it is valid HTML, which is all I claimed it to be.

I specifically didn’t mention XHTML, since the bits of the thread I
saw referenced HTML, and they’re enough different I figured XHTML
would have been mentioned if that’s what was wanted. Of course with
XHTML, you have CDATA sections, which can contain all sorts of
nastiness that can trip you up just as badly.

You have to do that as:

a > b

But my regexp wasn’t intended to be complete; there are full libraries
out there for that.

Right; my point was that in my experience, regexes seem to work just
fine, until suddenly they don’t, and then you have to spend silly
amounts of time compensating for them-- or you could just use a proper
library in the first place, and not have to worry about it.

-=Eric

8

i like this code i found, i did not make but found. and i wish i could
give
credit to who created it but i lost the website

require ‘cgi’

def html2text html
text = html.
gsub(/( |\n|\s)+/im, ’ ‘).squeeze(’ ').strip.
gsub(/<([^\s]+)[^>](src|href)=\s(.?)([^>\s])\3[^>]>\4</\1>/i,
‘\4’)

links = []
linkregex = /<[^>](src|href)=\s(.?)([^>\s])\2[^>]>\s*/i
while linkregex.match(text)
links << $~[3]
text.sub!(linkregex, “[#{links.size}]”)
end

text = CGI.unescapeHTML(
text.
gsub(/<(script|style)[^>]>.</\1>/im, ‘’).
gsub(//m, ‘’).
gsub(/<hr(| [^>])>/i, “___\n”).
gsub(/<li(| [^>])>/i, "\n* ").
gsub(/<blockquote(| [^>])>/i, '> ').
gsub(/<(br)(| [^>])>/i, “\n”).
gsub(/<(/h[\d]+|p)(| [^>])>/i, “\n\n”).
gsub(/<[^>]>/, ‘’)
).lstrip.gsub(/\n[ ]+/, “\n”) + “\n”

for i in (0…links.size).to_a
text = text + “\n [#{i+1}] <#{CGI.unescapeHTML(links[i])}>” unless
links[i].nil?
end
links = nil
text
end

input ="

Title

This is the body. Testing link to Google.

Testing image .
The End."

print html2text(input)

9

Gavin K. [email protected] writes:

engineering and maintaining real programs. As was suggested by the
other respondent, it’s relatively easy to remove:

a.gsub(%r{</?[^>]+?>}, ‘’)

…just pray that the HTML you are modifying is valid, and not some
garbage file that web browsers happen to treat as intended.

More like, “Just pray the HTML you are modifying doesn’t happen to be
completely valid, but not formed in exactly the way you are
expecting.” For instance, the following HTML snippet is completely
valid, but screws up the regex:

a > b

irb(main):010:0> a=‘

a > b

’
=> “

a <img src="greaterthan.gif" alt=">" /> b

”
irb(main):011:0> a.gsub(%r{</?[^>]+?>}, ‘’)
=> “a " /> b”

Finding other such examples is an exercise for the reader. This sort
of thing is why, as a rule, I avoid parsing HTML with regexes.

-=Eric

10

jotto wrote:

I can’t find a method to remove HTML from a string in the core API. PHP
has something called strip_tags. Does Ruby have anything like this?
PHP: strip_tags - Manual

Here is a gem for sanitizing strings Sanitize: A whitelist-based Ruby HTML sanitizer - wonko.com

11

I hate regex. I’ve written some ruby functions to remove html tags in
blocks and not just special characters… also rules for swapping html
code for anything else is included. Example
will be swapped out
for \n with existing rules. My code is available at
https://github.com/6ftDan/regex-is-evil

12

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 4:39 AM, Daniel P. C. [email protected]
wrote:

I hate regex. I’ve written some ruby functions to remove html tags in
blocks and not just special characters… also rules for swapping html
code for anything else is included. Example
will be swapped out
for \n with existing rules. My code is available at
https://github.com/6ftDan/regex-is-evil

What a mess. This is extremely inefficient. You create new strings
all the time. You go over the string multiple times. You do not pass
start and end index down to strip_seq(). There is no test which
ensures start index is lower than end index (try with string “>foo<”).

I’d prefer a regexp solution anytime. It’s likely faster and easier
to read - for me at least. Btw. /x goes a long way at making a regexp
more readable - you can even include comments. Just a simple example:

But proper tool is of course a HTML parser like Nokogiri.

Kind regards

robert