How to delete HTML and it's content in Java?

Question

I've got string <strong>Foo</strong>. I want to delete HTML tags from this string even with it's content. In this example expression must return "" (empty string). How should I do this?

May be duplicated http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1265282/recommended-method-for-escaping-html-in-java — Charaf JRA, Aug 25 '13 at 22:41
Can your data contain same nested tags like `xyz`? If yes then it will be probably impossible with regex in Java since it doesn't support recursion yet. — Pshemo, Aug 25 '13 at 22:44
He's asking if some data could have something like "bar
foo
" in it. If there cannot be nested html in your data then you could do it trivially with a regular expression — Cruncher, Aug 25 '13 at 23:02

Ravi K Thapliyal · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-25T23:22:21.337

If the html you're trying to remove wouldn't have any nested html tags; here's a simple regex based solution. You can assign tag name to tag for convenience and the regex would adjust accordingly.

String tag = "strong";
String str = "This is <strong>Foo</strong>Bar.";

String regex = "<\\s*" + tag + "[^>]*>[^<]*</\\s*" + tag + "\\s*>";

System.out.println(str.replaceAll(regex, "")); // This is Bar.

The regex accommodates for any extra tag attributes like <strong class="bold"> etc. ~~but could break if~~ and is updated to take care of slightly ill-formatted html like unnecessary white spaces or new lines here and there.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 25 '13 at 23:04

0

Since you are claiming that you don't have nested tags you can try using "<([^>]+)>.*?</\\1>

String data = "bar<strong>foo</strong>yyy<strong>zzz</strong>";
System.out.println(data.replaceAll("<([^>]+)>.*?</\\1>", ""));

ouptut

baryyy

answered Aug 25 '13 at 23:04

Pshemo

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@downvoter care to explain your action? – Pshemo Aug 26 '13 at 01:28

How to delete HTML and it's content in Java?

2 Answers2