How can i remove <div> tag from variable without using strip_tags?

Question

Here is my code

$str="<div>this is the variable</div>";

I want to remove its html tag <div> without using strip_tags. I need $str="this is the variable" Because my server is not working with strip_tags. I know it is possible with preg_replace. but i dont know regex. So please suggest me the solution.

Thank you in advance.

Solution 1

$s = "<div>this is the variable</div>";
echo preg_replace("/<div>(.*?)<\/div>/", "$1", $s);
// this is the variable

_{And of course, don't parse HTML with regex :-)}

DEMO.

Solution 2

This variant works also if the DIV tag contains attributes:

$str = '<div id="some_id">this is the variable</div>';
$str = preg_replace('/\<[\/]{0,1}div[^\>]*\>/i', '', $str);
echo $str;

Solution 3

If you want to remove the tag around your text and keep the other tags use:

$node = new DOMDocument();
$str = $node->loadXML($str)->firstChild->textContent;

WARNING: this will remove the first wrapper tag only

and this parses HTML as a markup, which it is.

Comments

[Krishna Karki]

Thnx Joa Silva for answer. but its amazing to me that your code is working good on my local but not on my server. And i also dont understand "And of course, don't parse HTML with regex"

[João Silva]

@KrishnaKarki: It's generally not advisable to use regex to parse HTML; it's usually better to use an HTML Parser. However, if you just want to extract the text between that div, and it has a static structure, it's fine to use a regex. Having said that, it's strange that works locally and not on your server. Are you sure the string is the same?

[Krishna Karki]

yes string is the same. I just copied your code and pasted to my project for testing first.

[João Silva]

@KrishnaKarki: What are you doing with the result in your production code? echoing it? Saving it in a variable, i.e., $result = preg_replace(...)? Are the PHP versions the same?

[Krishna Karki]

I m echoing the variable. and my PHP Version is 5.2.17

[Krishna Karki]

error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_WARNING | E_PARSE | E_NOTICE); this is my error reporting setting. but there is no error

[Razvan.432]

$str = preg_replace('/^\<[\/]{0,1}div[^\>]*\>/i', '', $str); use ^ so that it will remove only the first div