PHP strip_tags

Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the PHP strip_tags() function to strip HTML and PHP tags from a string.

Introduction to the PHP strip_tags() function

The strip_tags() function returns a new string with all HTML and PHP tags removed from the input string.

Here’s the syntax of the strip_tags() function:

strip_tags ( string $string , array|string|null $allowed_tags = null ) : stringCode language: PHP (php)

The strip_tags() function has the following parameters:

• $string is the input string.
• $allowed_tags is one or more tags that you want to retain in the result string. The $allowed_tags can be a string that contains the list of tags to retain e.g.,'<div>p>’. If you use PHP 7.4.0 or later, you can pass an array of tags instead of a string, e.g., ['div','p'].

PHP strip_tags() function examples

Let’s take some examples of using the strip_tags() function.

1) Using PHP strip_tags() function to remove all HTML tags

The following example shows how to use the strip_tags() function to strip all HTML tags from the contents of the page https://www.php.net:

<?php

$html = file_get_contents('https://www.php.net/');
$plain_text = strip_tags($html);

echo $plain_text;Code language: PHP (php)

How it works.

• First, use the file_get_contents() function to download the HTML contents from the php.net.
• Second, strip all the HTML tags from the HTML contents using the strip_tags() function.

2) Using PHP strip_tags() function with some allowed tags

The following example uses the strip_tags() function to strip all HTML tags from the contents of the page https://www.php.net but keeps the following tags: ['h1', 'h2', 'h3', 'p', 'ul', 'li', 'a']:

<?php

$html = file_get_contents('https://www.php.net/');
$simple_html = strip_tags($html, ['h1', 'h2', 'h3', 'p', 'ul', 'li', 'a']);

echo $simple_html;Code language: PHP (php)

Summary

• Use the PHP strip_tags() function to strip HTML and PHP tags from a string.