JAVASCRIPT
Cleaning and Sanitizing Text Input with Regex
Effectively clean and sanitize user input by removing extra spaces, HTML tags, or unwanted characters using JavaScript regular expressions.
const sanitizeText = (text) => {
// 1. Remove leading/trailing whitespace
let cleanedText = text.trim();
// 2. Replace multiple spaces with a single space
cleanedText = cleanedText.replace(/\s+/g, ' ');
// 3. (Optional) Remove basic HTML tags (be cautious, use a parser for robust sanitization)
cleanedText = cleanedText.replace(/<\/?[^>]+(>|$)/g, "");
// 4. (Optional) Remove specific non-alphanumeric characters (keep spaces)
// cleanedText = cleanedText.replace(/[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]/g, "");
return cleanedText;
};
const dirtyInput = " Hello <b>World</b>! This is a test. ";
console.log(sanitizeText(dirtyInput)); // "Hello World! This is a test."
How it works: This JavaScript function `sanitizeText` demonstrates how to clean and sanitize text input using regular expressions. It first trims leading/trailing whitespace, then collapses multiple internal spaces into single spaces. Optionally, it shows how to remove basic HTML tags and specific non-alphanumeric characters, providing a cleaner, safer string for display or further processing.