Decode HTML entities with Regex

Question

I've a large amount of encoded text, like this:

&#60;div id&#61;&#34;readingPaneContentContainer&#34; class&#61;&#34;ClearBoth&#34;  cmp&#61;&#34;cmp&#34; ulr&#61;&#34;ulr&#34;&#62;&#60;a id&#61;&#34;rpFocusElt&#34; href&#61;&#34;javascript&#58;void&#40;0&#41;&#59;&#34; style&#61;&#34;height&#58;1px&#59;width&#58;1px&#59

I would like de-encode all, so to have (Example):

<div id="readingPaneContentContainer" class="ClearBoth".....

Is possible to do with Regular Expressions?

Any help would be appreciated.

Luca

jQuery, but i think that will don't change anything..correct? — Luca, Mar 29 '13 at 15:45
regex implementation is different in different languages. Also it makes a difference to how one repesents the entites in unicode. — Boris the Spider, Mar 29 '13 at 15:48
Possibly of interest - [RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags](http://stackoverflow.com/q/1732348/427192) — Dan Pichelman, Mar 29 '13 at 15:49
@DanPichelman : This regex wouldn't replace encoded tags but match only existent (Not encoded). — Luca, Mar 29 '13 at 15:53
Why do you want to use Regex? Wouldn't it be faster to create a small dictionary mapping encodings to decodings and just loop over the string, replacing things as you go? — Ken Bellows, Mar 29 '13 at 16:16
@Luca the language is called JavaScript. jQuery is a library built on this language. — Christophe, Mar 29 '13 at 18:12

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

1

See this thread - it has your solution for jQuery that works perfectly:

How to decode HTML entities using jQuery?

var encoded = '&#60;div id&#61;&#34;readingPaneContentContainer&#34; class&#61;&#34;ClearBoth&#34;  cmp&#61;&#34;cmp&#34; ulr&#61;&#34;ulr&#34;&#62;&#60;a id&#61;&#34;rpFocusElt&#34; href&#61;&#34;javascript&#58;void&#40;0&#41;&#59;&#34; style&#61;&#34;height&#58;1px&#59;width&#58;1px&#59';

var decoded = $("<div/>").html(encoded).text();

Does not use regex.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

Community

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answered Mar 29 '13 at 16:25

methai

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Works fine, but to maintain the tag must be removed .text() Thanks you – Luca Mar 29 '13 at 19:11
This is really slow compared to regexp – Viesturs Aug 22 '14 at 12:51

Loamhoof · Answer 2 · 2013-03-29T16:24:56.663

0

Something along the lines of:

var regex = /&#(\d{2});/g;
var match;
while(match = regex.exec(myString)) {
    match = match[1];
    myString = myString.substring(0, regex.lastIndex - 5) + convert[match] + myString.substring(regex.lastIndex);
}

might work but there must be better solutions (considering convert is an object that makes the conversion, eg 80: '<').

Explaination: regex.exec with a 'global' flag allows looping through the regex, regex.lastPoint's value being the pointer to the rest of the string (not being tested yet).

Edit:
Working.

edited Mar 29 '13 at 16:24

answered Mar 29 '13 at 15:55

Loamhoof

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Sorry parenthesis error in the regex, I changed it, maybe try again (I'll run some tests myself). – Loamhoof Mar 29 '13 at 16:17
Now i get the following error: convert is not defined Thanks you for the help ;) – Luca Mar 29 '13 at 19:15
Quote: *(considering convert is an object that makes the conversion, eg 80: '<')* You have to build this map before doing it. Anyway doing it with jQuery is a safer and easier way. – Loamhoof Mar 30 '13 at 10:51

Decode HTML entities with Regex

2 Answers2