php: remove excess <br> and tags from a string

Question

how can I remove excess <br> and &nbsp; tags from the start and end of a string?

Thanks :)

Answer 1

try this:

$str = preg_replace('{^(<br(\s*/)?>|ANDnbsp;)+}i', '', $str); //from start
$str = preg_replace('{(<br(\s*/)?>|ANDnbsp;)+$}i', '', $str); //from end

that also gets XHTML <br /> and <br/> forms

note: replace "AND" with an ampersand above (can't figure out how to get the software to not turn it into an actual non-breaking space)

Answer 2

With preg_replace:

$str = "<br>some text&nbsp;"
$str = preg_replace('/(^(<br>|&nbsp)*)|((<br>|&nbsp)*$)/i', '', $str);

Didn't test it, but something like that should work.