How to remove HTML tags from a string in PHP?

By Ujwal Kumar Sahoo

In this article, we will discuss how to remove HTML tags from a string in PHP.  Removing  HTML tags can be done in 2 ways-

  • Using predefined method
  • Using the userdefined method

Predefined method: Remove HTML tag in PHP

In PHP, strip_tags()  method  removes the existing HTML tags.

Syntax:-

strip_tags(string);

Example:-

<?php

//declaring a string with html tags
$html_string="Welcome <span>to</span> <b>Codespeedy</b>";

//display the sting without any html tags
echo strip_tags($html_string);

?>

Output:-

Welcome to Codespeedy

User-defined method for removing HTML tag in PHP

Let us discuss our user-defined method that takes the number of  HTML tags as input for removing those tags.

<?php

//declaring a string using Heredoc method
$html_string = <<<STRING
        <html>
      <body>
        <span>Welcome to Codespeedy.</span>
        <b>Hello to everyone</b>
      </body>
    </html>
STRING;

//calling the remove_html_tags function with the necessary html tags you want to remove
$removed_str=remove_html_tags($html_string, array("html", "body", "span","b"));

//To avoid executing rest tags it is converted to normal text and display the result
echo htmlentities($removed_str);

    
function remove_html_tags($html_string, $html_tags) 
{
    $tagStr = "";
  
        foreach($html_tags as $key => $value) 
    { 
            $tagStr .= $key == count($html_tags)-1 ? $value : "{$value}|"; 
        }
  
    $pat_str= array("/(<\s*\b({$tagStr})\b[^>]*>)/i", "/(<\/\s*\b({$tagStr})\b\s*>)/i");
    $result = preg_replace($pat_str, "", $html_string);

    return $result;
}

?>

Output:-

Welcome to Codespeedy. Hello to everyone

Note:-

  • This user-defined method only removes those HTML tags that are passed as an argument.

In this way, we can remove HTML tags in PHP. If you have any doubts about the above topic, leave us a comment below.

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