JAVASCRIPT
Strip HTML Tags from String using Regex
Discover a simple yet effective regular expression in JavaScript to remove all HTML tags from a string, useful for sanitizing user input or displaying plain text.
function stripHtmlTags(htmlString) {
// Regex to match any HTML tag: <tagname attributes>content</tagname>
// The /g flag ensures all occurrences are replaced.
const htmlTagRegex = new RegExp(/<[^>]*>/g);
return htmlString.replace(htmlTagRegex, "");
}
// Usage examples:
// const richText = "<h1>Hello World!</h1><p>This is <strong>bold</strong> text.</p>";
// console.log(stripHtmlTags(richText)); // "Hello World!This is bold text."
// console.log(stripHtmlTags("<a href='#'>Link</a> without attributes.")); // "Link without attributes."
How it works: The `stripHtmlTags` function in JavaScript uses a regular expression to remove all HTML tags from a given string. The pattern `/<[^>]*>/g` matches any sequence that starts with '<', contains any characters that are not '>', and ends with '>'. The `g` (global) flag ensures that all matched tags, not just the first one, are replaced with an empty string, effectively stripping them from the text. This is useful for sanitizing user-generated content or displaying plain text versions of rich HTML.