Removing Script Tags from HTML Content: A Comprehensive Guide

While using HTML Purifier, you may wish to specifically remove script tags without removing inline formatting or other elements. This can be accomplished through various methods.

Using Regular Expressions

Although not recommended for HTML parsing, a simple regular expression can achieve the task:

$html = preg_replace('#<script(.*?)>(.*?)</script>#is', '', $html);

Using DOMDocument

A more reliable and safe approach is to utilize the DOMDocument class, designed for HTML parsing:

$dom = new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML($html);
foreach ($dom->getElementsByTagName('script') as $item) {
    $item->parentNode->removeChild($item);
}
$html = $dom->saveHTML();

Additional Alternatives

Alternatively, consider using one of the following techniques:

• HTML Purifier with Custom Filter: Configure HTML Purifier to remove script tags by creating a custom filter.
• PHP Simple HTML DOM Parser: Use this popular PHP library to remove script tags efficiently.
• Jsoup Library for Java: For Java-based projects, Jsoup provides a robust method for cleaning HTML content.

Security Considerations

Remember that user input should be treated as potentially unsafe. Always sanitize and validate HTML content to prevent malicious code injection. Regular expressions should only be used on trusted content.