How do I remove a node with Nokogiri?

Question

How can I remove <img> tags using Nokogiri?

I have the following code but it wont work:

# str = '<img src="canadascapital.gc.ca/data/2/rec_imgs/5005_Pepsi_H1NB.gif"/…; testt<a href="#">test</a>tfbu' 

f = Nokogiri::XML.fragment(str)
f.search('//img').each do |node| 
  node.remove
end
puts f

added that to the question.. next time just edit the question to add the information asked for, much easier than having to assemble stuff out of the question plus comments. — Chuck van der Linden, Apr 25 '12 at 19:43
I needed to remove all the scripts on a page $page_html = Nokogiri::HTML.parse($browser.html) ; $page_html.search('//script').each{|x| x.remove} ; # worked like a charm. ty — Duck1337, Jul 09 '15 at 16:50

score 86 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 05 '10 at 05:48

86

have a try!

f = Nokogiri::XML.fragment(str)

f.search('.//img').remove
puts f

edited Dec 05 '10 at 05:48

the Tin Man

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answered Nov 12 '09 at 06:35

xds2000

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the Tin Man · Answer 2 · 2015-10-08T00:48:43.233

16

I prefer CSS over XPath, as it's usually much more readable. Switching to CSS:

require 'nokogiri'

doc = Nokogiri::HTML('<html><body><img src="foo"><img src="bar"></body></html>')

After parsing the document looks like:

doc.to_html
# => "<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body>\n<img src=\"foo\"><img src=\"bar\">\n</body></html>\n"

Removing the <img> tags:

doc.search('img').each do |src|
  src.remove
end

Results in:

doc.to_html
# => "<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body></body></html>\n"

edited Oct 08 '15 at 00:48

answered Sep 29 '13 at 04:03

the Tin Man

158,662
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2

Since your block is just calling a method on each iterable, if you want to be fancy you can do symbol to proc: `doc.search('img').each(&:remove)`. – Tyler James Young Apr 16 '20 at 04:19
Yes, but back then, in 2013, we didn't have that fancy ability. – the Tin Man Apr 16 '20 at 05:20
3

I'm from the future! :) Thanks for this answer. This one and others of yours have been helping me a lot as I'm making Ruby scripts to change large batches of HTML files and automate myself out of a (menial component of my) job. – Tyler James Young Apr 17 '20 at 16:46
It's nice to know the answers help; That's the whole point of SO, teaching and passing on what we've learned. – the Tin Man Apr 18 '20 at 20:42

How do I remove a node with Nokogiri?

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