I'm having trouble trying to pass a variable into a complex regex that already works

Question

Below is some code I've been messing with that basically takes a string containing HTML and removes elements with class="normal". To do so, the prototype function removes all line breaks, etc before it actually removes an element and all of its inner contents. The below code works as expected:

var msg = '<p>Keeping this paragraph</p>\n<p class="normal">Removing this paragraph<br>\n</p>\n<p class="normal">Another paragraph to remove<br>\n</p>';

String.prototype.takeOut = function() {   
    return this.replace(/(\r\n|\n|\r)/gm," ")
           .replace(/<p[^>]*class="normal"[^>]*>(.*?)<\/p>/g, '');
};

alert(msg.takeOut());

My problem is that I want to pass an argument through the method like so..

msg.takeOut('normal')

and let the prototype function take that argument to remove elements with whatever class we want like so:

msg.takeOut('foo')
msg.takeOut('bar')

Here is an example with more details:

http://jsfiddle.net/sc276v98/

I know that "new RegEx()" might be the solution, but how do I incorporate that into what already works? No jQuery please! Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

Based on the jsfiddle code, try:

String.prototype.takeOut2 = function(i) {
  var regExp = new RegExp('<p[^>]*class="'+i+'"[^>]*>(.*?)<\/p>', 'g');
  return this.replace(/(\r\n|\n|\r)/gm," ")
           .replace(regExp, '');
};

Answer 2

Since Mindastic already has a working solution using Regex, this is just an alternative, using the nodes:

var msg = '<p>Keeping this paragraph</p>\n<p class="normal">Removing this paragraph<br>\n</p>\n<p class="normal">Another paragraph to remove<br>\n</p>';

String.prototype.takeOut = function(x) {   
    var temp = document.createElement('div'), targets = temp.getElementsByClassName(x);
    temp.innerHTML = this;
    while(targets.length){ temp.removeChild(targets[0]); }
    return temp.innerHTML;
};

alert( msg.takeOut('normal') );