How to convert html correctly in javascript?

Question

I need to convert snippets of text that contain html tags into plain text using Javascript / Node.Js.

I currently use String.Js library for that, but the problem is that when it removes the tags (using strip_tags() functions), it also removes the new line.

E.g.

   <div>Some text</div><div>another text</div>

becomes

   Some textanother text

Do you know how I could get rid of this problem? Maybe another library?

Thanks!

If you can use the DOM, you can use `element.innerHTML` to access its guts. — Compass, Nov 03 '14 at 20:24
Have you tried using [regex](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/2947592)? — wvdz, Nov 03 '14 at 20:24
@Compass the thing is that i'm dealing with content inside node.js, so how would i do that? — Aerodynamika, Nov 03 '14 at 20:34
@deemeetree I am not familiar with node.js natively. You'll probably have to post some example code of what you're currently doing and I'll be able to see the syntax. — Compass, Nov 03 '14 at 20:36
How would you determine that there is supposed to be a newline between the two `div`s? There could be CSS rules that modify the default layout (e.g. making both `div`s display as inline instead of block) and those kinds of changes are not evident from parsing the HTML itself. — mscdex, Nov 03 '14 at 21:34

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 03 '14 at 21:17

1

Try using Cheerio. It will expose a jQuery like interface for you on the server side. Then it's just:

var html = $(htmlstring).html();

Then just traverse the DOM for whatever elements you want and call $(element).text();

answered Nov 03 '14 at 21:17

Alex Hill

713
1
5
13

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 03 '14 at 20:35

0

Hi this is very simple solution of your problem because I'm using reg exp and you can do what you want.

In this case we remove all tags except br tags.If you want you can remove br tag and add another tag maybe \n \t or what you want.

I hope this can help you.

Chears!!!

var html = "<div>Some text</div><div>another text</div><br />test<div>10</div>";
var removeHtmlTags = html.replace(/(<([^>!br]+)>)/ig,"");
console.log(removeHtmlTags);

answered Nov 03 '14 at 20:35

user3385530

67
6

1

Look at the OP's specific HTML. It's not even about `
` tags. This is far, far too simplistic a solution to do what the OP wants and doesn't even work on the sample HTML the OP provides. – jfriend00 Nov 03 '14 at 21:25

How to convert html correctly in javascript?

2 Answers2