Remove HTML Tags from an NSString on the iPhone

Question

There are a couple of different ways to remove HTML tags from an NSString in Cocoa.

One way is to render the string into an

Answer 1

A quick and "dirty" (removes everything between < and >) solution, works with iOS >= 3.2:

-(NSString *) stringByStrippingHTML {
  NSRange r;
  NSString *s = [[self copy] autorelease];
  while ((r = [s rangeOfString:@"<[^>]+>" options:NSRegularExpressionSearch]).location != NSNotFound)
    s = [s stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:r withString:@""];
  return s;
}

I have this declared as a category os NSString.

Answer 2

I would imagine the safest way would just be to parse for <>s, no? Loop through the entire string, and copy anything not enclosed in <>s to a new string.

Answer 3

You can use like below

-(void)myMethod
 {

 NSString* htmlStr = @"<some>html</string>";
 NSString* strWithoutFormatting = [self stringByStrippingHTML:htmlStr];

 }

 -(NSString *)stringByStrippingHTML:(NSString*)str
 {
   NSRange r;
   while ((r = [str rangeOfString:@"<[^>]+>" options:NSRegularExpressionSearch]).location     != NSNotFound)
  {
     str = [str stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:r withString:@""];
 }
  return str;
 }

Answer 4

This is the modernization of m.kocikowski answer which removes whitespaces:

@implementation NSString (StripXMLTags)

- (NSString *)stripXMLTags
{
    NSRange r;
    NSString *s = [self copy];
    while ((r = [s rangeOfString:@"<[^>]+>\\s*" options:NSRegularExpressionSearch]).location != NSNotFound)
        s = [s stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:r withString:@""];
    return s;
}

@end