how to remove a tag and its contents using regular expression?

Question

$str = 'some text tag contents more text ';

My questions are: How to retrieve content tag <em>contents </em> which is between <MY_TAG> .. </MY_TAG>?

And

How to remove <MY_TAG> and its contents from $str?

I am using PHP.

Thank you.

Answer 1

I tested this function, it works for nested tags too, use true/false to exclude/include your tags. Found here: https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strip-tags.php

<?php
function strip_tags_content($text, $tags = '', $invert = FALSE) {

  preg_match_all('/<(.+?)[\s]*\/?[\s]*>/si', trim($tags), $tags);
  $tags = array_unique($tags[1]);
   
  if(is_array($tags) AND count($tags) > 0) {
    if($invert == FALSE) {
      return preg_replace('@<(?!(?:'. implode('|', $tags) .')\b)(\w+)\b.*?>.*?</\1>@si', '', $text);
    }
    else {
      return preg_replace('@<('. implode('|', $tags) .')\b.*?>.*?</\1>@si', '', $text);
    }
  }
  elseif($invert == FALSE) {
    return preg_replace('@<(\w+)\b.*?>.*?</\1>@si', '', $text);
  }
  return $text;
}




// Sample text:
$text = '<b>sample</b> text with <div>tags</div>';

// Result for:
echo strip_tags_content($text);
// text with

// Result for:
echo strip_tags_content($text, '<b>');
// <b>sample</b> text with

// Result for:
echo strip_tags_content($text, '<b>', TRUE);
// text with <div>tags</div>