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Answer 1

+1 A:

Why can't you just dump the html string you need into a DOM helper, then use getElementsByTagName('a') to grab all anchors and use getAttribute to get the href, removeChild to remove it?

meder 2010-06-17 18:58:54

The OP probably has a big HTML file coming in and the whole question is finding <a> inside of <form> tags.

Dmitri Farkov 2010-06-17 19:00:13

Answer 2

A:

Any particular reason you would want to do that with Regular Expressions? It sounds like it would be fairly straightforward in Javascript to spin through the DOM and to it that way.

In jQuery, for instance, it seems like you could do this in just a couple lines using its DOM selectors.

Jason Kester 2010-06-17 18:59:50

What about a fallback option in case the user does not have JS enabled?

Dmitri Farkov 2010-06-17 19:02:28

Answer 3

A:

If forms can be nested, it is technically impossible.
If forms can not be nested, it is practically impossible. There is no function where you can use the same regex to
1. define an area where the matching should be done (i.e. outside form)
2. define things to be matched (i.e. elements)

Sjoerd 2010-06-17 19:01:16

Answer 4

+1 A:

This looks like PHP, right? http://htmlpurifier.org/

MiffTheFox 2010-06-17 19:03:50

Answer 5

+2 A:

The NON-regexp way:

<?php
$html = '<html><body><a href="foo">a <b>bold</b> foz </a> b c <form><a href="foo">l</a></form> <a href="boz">a</a></body></html>';
$d = new DOMDocument();
$d->loadHTML($html);
$x = new DOMXPath($d);
$elements = $x->query('//a[not(ancestor::form) and @href="foo"]');
foreach($elements as $elm){
        //run if contents of <a> should be visible:
        while($elm->firstChild){
                $elm->parentNode->insertBefore($elm->firstChild,$elm);
        }
        //remove a
        $elm->parentNode->removeChild($elm);
}
var_dump($d->saveXML());
?>

Wrikken 2010-06-17 19:40:15

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/regexp?/ on HTML, but not in form

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