HTML Stripper: Clean Text from HTML
Remove all HTML tags from text — preserving formatting, links, or just extracting plain text.
Published:
Tags: HTML stripper tool, remove HTML tags, extract text from HTML
HTML Stripper: Clean Text from HTML The HTML Living Standard maintained by WHATWG defines the DOM structure and behavior used in HTML stripping. The DOMParser API is the correct method for parsing HTML — never use regex on HTML. The HTML Stripper removes all HTML tags from a block of HTML, returning clean plain text — using a DOM parser, not regex. --- Why DOM Parsing Instead of Regex? Regex-based HTML stripping is famously unreliable. HTML is not a regular language: attributes can contain , comments can contain anything, and script/style blocks can contain patterns that look like end tags. The correct approach: let the browser's HTML parser handle the HTML, then read : The DOM parser: Correctly handles all valid HTML Handles malformed HTML according to the HTML5 spec Strips and content…
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I remove HTML tags from text?
Paste your HTML into the HTML Stripper tool and click Strip. All HTML tags are removed using a DOM parser — not regex — leaving only the text content. The result is clean plain text suitable for copying or further processing.
How do I convert HTML to plain text?
The tool uses the browser's DOMParser to parse the HTML and then reads the textContent property of the parsed document. This correctly handles nested tags, entities (&, <), and self-closing elements.
How do I preserve line breaks when stripping HTML?
Enable the Preserve Block Elements option. Block-level tags (div, p, h1–h6, li, br) are converted to newlines before stripping tags, so paragraph breaks survive in the output.
How do I strip HTML in JavaScript?
The safest approach is DOMParser: const doc = new DOMParser().parseFromString(html, 'text/html'); return doc.body.textContent. Never use regex for HTML parsing or innerHTML on an attached DOM element — both can introduce security issues.
What is XSS and why does HTML stripping not prevent it?
Cross-site scripting (XSS) occurs when attacker-controlled HTML executes as JavaScript. Stripping tags from text you display as text content (not innerHTML) is safe. But if you re-inject stripped text as innerHTML, a script that survived stripping (via attribute-based injection or parser quirks) can execute. Always use textContent, never innerHTML, for untrusted stripped text.
All articles · theproductguy.in