How to remove a specific HTML tag (and its content)?

Question

I can't find the right keyword. I have this string :

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

<table border="2" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="width: 490px;">
    <tr>
        <th>Company</th>
        <th>Contact</th>
        <th>Country</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Alfreds Futterkiste</td>
        <td>Maria Anders</td>
        <td>Germany</td>
    </tr>
</table>

Duis consequat varius aliquam. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.

<table border="2" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="width: 490px;">
    <tr>
        <th>Company</th>
        <th>Contact</th>
        <th>Country</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Alfreds Futterkiste</td>
        <td>Maria Anders</td>
        <td>Germany</td>
    </tr>
</table>

What I want is :

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Duis consequat varius aliquam. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.

My attempt :

<table(.*)[^>]*>.*?

RegExr link.

This is for a script using perl that I'll make to remove table tags from a specific db table field. My attempt was targeting the table tag first and replace them with blank using perl.

I don't think Regex is the right tool for this. You should do that using some HTML parser — Youssef13, Mar 27 '20 at 08:35
[Parsing HTML with regex is a hard job](https://stackoverflow.com/a/4234491/372239) HTML and regex are not good friends. Use a parser, it is simpler, faster and much more maintainable. — Toto, Mar 27 '20 at 14:28

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 27 '20 at 11:20

1

I'm not sure what you're trying to do, you say that you want to match the Lorem Ipsum, but your regex matches the HTML tags...

Anyways, here's some regex:

To match the <table>...</table>:

/<(table)[\s\S]*?<\/\1>/g

To match the Lorem Ipsum parts (or any line not beginning with a <):

/(?<=^|[\n\r])[^<\s].*(?=$|[\n\r])/g

answered Mar 27 '20 at 11:20

Zorzi

718
4
9

My attempt was targeting the table tag first and replace them with blank using perl. Thanks by the way. – Ronniel Sembrano Mar 30 '20 at 05:44

Kenan Güler · Answer 2 · 2020-03-28T23:04:42.993

Don't spend your time too much with regexp. You can simply select the tables and their content and remove them from the actual string.

Use the following regex to select the tables first: <table.*>[\w\W]*?<\/table>. Playground.

Then use string.replace (or something similar) to remove the tables...

Demo:

const contentWrapper = document.getElementById('demo-content');
const content = contentWrapper.innerHTML;
contentWrapper.innerHTML = ''; // no need to display the HTML content here
const html = content.replace(/<table.*>[\w\W]*?<\/table>/g, '');
console.log(html)

<div id="demo-content">
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

<table border="2" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="width: 490px;">
    <tr>
        <th>Company</th>
        <th>Contact</th>
        <th>Country</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Alfreds Futterkiste</td>
        <td>Maria Anders</td>
        <td>Germany</td>
    </tr>
</table>

Duis consequat varius aliquam. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.

<table border="2" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="width: 490px;">
    <tr>
        <th>Company</th>
        <th>Contact</th>
        <th>Country</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>Alfreds Futterkiste</td>
        <td>Maria Anders</td>
        <td>Germany</td>
    </tr>
</table>
</div>

Thanks I conveted your code into perl and it's working. Cheers. — Ronniel Sembrano, Mar 30 '20 at 05:46

How to remove a specific HTML tag (and its content)?

2 Answers2