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Replace HTML Tags From text/string Using regex

Rajdeep Debnath

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12 Dec 2015CPOL

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Replace all HTML tags from text/string

Introduction

This tip shows you how to replace HTML tags from text/string using Regular expression.

Using the Code

Pass text/string to input variable. The regular expression will remove HTML tags like <p>, </p>, <body>, </div>, etc. This is case insensitive.

C#

string input = "<b>This is test.</b><p> Enter any text.</p><div> The place is really beautiful.</div><img src=''>";

//To remove tags which are without any attribute
string str1 = Regex.Replace(input, @"(\<(\/)?(\w)*(\d)?\>)", string.Empty);

//To remove all kind of tags -- suggested by codeproject member 'svella'
string str2 = Regex.Replace(input, @"<.*?>", string.Empty);

Console.WriteLine(str1);
Console.WriteLine(str2);
Console.ReadLine();

Points of Interest

Less code compared to string.Replace(), less maintenance.
Even if tomorrow new HTML tags come or it can even remove 3^rdparty tags which follow HTML tag kind of syntax

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Written By

Rajdeep Debnath

Asia/Pacific Region

This member has not yet provided a Biography. Assume it's interesting and varied, and probably something to do with programming.

Comments and Discussions

Title needs changed

Eric A Law28-Jan-22 3:51

28-Jan-22 3:51

I came here hoping to find a solution to *replace* HTML tags in a string with something else - specifically I want to change "<anything>" to "(anything)" ie replace GT and LT symbols with parens. But this article only shows how to *remove* HTML tags. So the title is not quite correct.

DON'T USE REGEXPFOR PARSING HTML

giammin17-Dec-15 0:02

17-Dec-15 0:02

Using a regular expression to parse HTML is fraught with pitfalls. HTML is not a regular language and hence can't be 100% correctly parsed with a regex.

The best approach is to use an HTML / XML parser like Html Agility Pack to do this for you.

Nice. Just added a little formatting helper with paragraphs and breaks

lespauled11-Dec-15 7:36

11-Dec-15 7:36

C#

string input = "<b>This is test</b><p>Enter any text</p><div>The place is really<br/>beautiful.</div>";

string str = Regex.Replace(input, @"(<(/)?([pP]|BR|br)(/)?>)", Environment.NewLine);

str = Regex.Replace(str, @"(<(/)?(\w)*(\d)?>)", string.Empty);

Console.WriteLine(str);

Some simplification suggestions

Thomas Daniels10-Dec-15 5:28

10-Dec-15 5:28

Hello,

I have a few suggestions to simplify the regex so it's easier to read:

<, > and / don't need to be escaped.
Adding parentheses around the whole regex is not necessary.
You don't need to add parentheses around one metacharacter before a quantifier.
\w matches digits, so there is no need for an extra \d after it.

By applying those, the regex looks a lot simpler: @"</?\w*>".

The quick brown ProgramFOX jumps right over the Lazy<Dog>.

Re: Some simplification suggestions

Rajdeep Debnath10-Dec-15 5:47

Rajdeep Debnath

10-Dec-15 5:47

Thank you.

Re: Some simplification suggestions

svella11-Dec-15 11:38

11-Dec-15 11:38

Going even further, as is this will fail to remove tags with attributes or even extra whitespace after the tag name. Rather than try to match specific characters between the angle brackets, why not just use a non-greedy quantifier: @"<.*?>"

This also has the added benefit of also removing comments, processing instructions, but will also clobber CDATA sections, which you probably don't want to do. If you want to handle real world HTML from arbitrary sources, there really is no substitute for a full HTML parser.

Re: Some simplification suggestions

Rajdeep Debnath11-Dec-15 21:13

Rajdeep Debnath

11-Dec-15 21:13

great one. Thank you.

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