Append html to jQuery element without running scripts inside the html

Question

I have written some code that takes a string of html and cleans away any ugly HTML from it using jQuery (see an early prototype in this SO question). It works pretty well, but I

Answer 1

You should remove the script elements:

var wrapper = $('<div/>').append($(html).remove("script"));

Second attempt:

node-validator can be used in the browser: https://github.com/chriso/node-validator

var str = sanitize(large_input_str).xss();

Alternatively, PHPJS has a strip_tags function (regex/evil based): http://phpjs.org/functions/strip_tags:535

Answer 2

How about removing the scripts first?

var wrapper = $('<div/>').append($(html).not('script'));

• Create the div container
• Use plain JS to put html into div
• Remove all script elements in the div

Assuming script elements in the html are not nested in other elements:

var wrapper = document.createElement('div');
wrapper.innerHTML = html;
$(wrapper).children().remove('script');

var wrapper = document.createElement('div');
wrapper.innerHTML = html;
$(wrapper).find('script').remove();

This works for the case where html is just text and where html has text outside any elements.