Strip(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Strip(3)NAMEHTML::Strip - Perl extension for stripping HTML markup from text.
SYNOPSIS
use HTML::Strip;
my $hs = HTML::Strip->new();
my $clean_text = $hs->parse( $raw_html );
$hs->eof;
DESCRIPTION
This module simply strips HTML-like markup from text in a very quick
and brutal manner. It could quite easily be used to strip XML or SGML
from text as well; but removing HTML markup is a much more common
problem, hence this module lives in the HTML:: namespace.
It is written in XS, and thus about five times quicker than using
regular expressions for the same task.
It does not do any syntax checking (if you want that, use
HTML::Parser), instead it merely applies the following rules:
1. Anything that looks like a tag, or group of tags will be replaced
with a single space character. Tags are considered to be anything
that starts with a "<" and ends with a ">"; with the caveat that a
">" character may appear in either of the following without ending
the tag:
Quote
Quotes are considered to start with either a "'" or a """
character, and end with a matching character not preceded by an
even number or escaping slashes (i.e. "\"" does not end the
quote but "\\\\"" does).
Comment
If the tag starts with an exclamation mark, it is assumed to be
a declaration or a comment. Within such tags, ">" characters do
not end the tag if they appear within pairs of double dashes
(e.g. "<!-- <a href="old.htm">old page</a> -->" would be
stripped completely).
2. Anything the appears within so-called strip tags is stripped as
well. By default, these tags are "title", "script", "style" and
"applet".
HTML::Strip maintains state between calls, so you can parse a document
in chunks should you wish. If one chunk ends half-way through a tag,
quote, comment, or whatever; it will remember this, and expect the next
call to parse to start with the remains of said tag.
If this is not going to be the case, be sure to call $hs->eof() between
calls to $hs->parse().
METHODS
new()
Constructor. Can optionally take a hash of settings (with keys
corresponsing to the "set_" methods below).
For example, the following is a valid constructor:
my $hs = HTML::Strip->new(
striptags => [ 'script', 'iframe' ],
emit_spaces => 0
);
parse()
Takes a string as an argument, returns it stripped of HTML.
eof()
Resets the current state information, ready to parse a new block of
HTML.
clear_striptags()
Clears the current set of strip tags.
add_striptag()
Adds the string passed as an argument to the current set of strip
tags.
set_striptags()
Takes a reference to an array of strings, which replace the current
set of strip tags.
set_emit_spaces()
Takes a boolean value. If set to false, HTML::Strip will not
attempt any conversion of tags into spaces. Set to true by default.
set_decode_entities()
Takes a boolean value. If set to false, HTML::Strip will decode
HTML entities. Set to true by default.
LIMITATIONS
Whitespace
Despite only outputting one space character per group of tags, and
avoiding doing so when tags are bordered by spaces or the start or
end of strings, HTML::Strip can often output more than desired;
such as with the following HTML:
<h1> HTML::Strip </h1> <p> <em> <strong> fast, and brutal </strong> </em> </p>
Which gives the following output:
" HTML::Strip fast, and brutal "
Thus, you may want to post-filter the output of HTML::Strip to
remove excess whitespace (for example, using "tr/ / /s;"). (This
has been improved since previous releases, but is still an issue)
HTML Entities
HTML::Strip will only attempt decoding of HTML entities if
HTML::Entities is installed.
EXPORT
None by default.
AUTHOR
Alex Bowley <kilinrax@cpan.org>
SEE ALSO
perl, HTML::Parser, HTML::Entities
POD ERRORS
Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained
below:
Around line 161:
'=item' outside of any '=over'
Around line 204:
You forgot a '=back' before '=head2'
Around line 230:
You forgot a '=back' before '=head2'
perl v5.14.1 2006-02-10 Strip(3)
