strip any hyperlinks and text within from piece of text

Question

I'm looking to know how I can strip any hyperlink < a > tags from within some text - the whole lot including the text/image whatever is being linked before the end < / a > tag.

E.g.

<a href="http://stackoverflow.com">Click here</a>        
<a href="http://stackoverflow.com"><img src="http://stackoverflow.com" alt = "blah"></a>

ie. remove the whole lot.

Any ideas how to do this?

Thanks

@Jay - I don't think that will satisfy his requirements, because it will not catch the content between the start and end of the anchor tag. — Karl Anderson, Jun 24 '13 at 18:27
Strong is the power of regular expressions. Under estimate them you should not. — Jay, Jun 24 '13 at 18:32

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

1

Obligatory "don't use regex to parse html" warning: RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

I would recommend either converting to XHTML and using xPath or taking a look at the HTMLAgilityPack to do this. I have used both methods for parsing/modifying html in the past and they are far more flexible/robust than using regex.

Here is an example that should get you started with HtmlAgilityPack:

 HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
 doc.Load("file.htm");
 foreach(HtmlNode link in doc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//a[@href]")
 {
    // Do stuff!
 }
 doc.Save("file.htm");

edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

Community

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answered Jun 24 '13 at 18:32

Abe Miessler

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+1 for HTMLAgilityPack. Regex might suffice for this case but for more complex HTML parsing, HTMLAgilityPack is the way to go. – keyboardP Jun 24 '13 at 18:34

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 24 '13 at 18:30

0

From what I understand, this should work

string linksRemoved = Regex.Replace(withLinks, @"</?(a|A).*>", "");

answered Jun 24 '13 at 18:30

keyboardP

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Jay · Answer 3 · 2013-06-24T18:41:31.137

0

You can try a regular expression to replace your tags. My regex isn't the best but this should get you close.

System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace(
     input, 
     @"<a[^>]*?>.*?</a>", 
     string.Empty);

edited Jun 24 '13 at 18:41

answered Jun 24 '13 at 18:30

Jay

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strip any hyperlinks and text within from piece of text

3 Answers3