NAME

       HTML::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 rapidly and brutally.  It could easily be used to
       strip XML or SGML markup instead; but as removing HTML is a much more common problem, 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).   No  parsing  for
               quotes is performed within comments, so for instance "<!-- comment with both ' quote types " -->"
               would be entirely stripped.

       2.  Anything  the appears within what we term 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().
       Alternatively,  you  may  set  "auto_reset"  to  true  on  the  constructor  or  any  time   after   with
       "set_auto_reset",  so  that the parser will always operate in one-shot basis (resetting after each parsed
       chunk).

   METHODS
       new()
           Constructor.  Can optionally take a hash of settings (with keys corresponding 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.

       filter_entities()
           If     HTML::Entities     is     available,     this    method    behaves    just    like    invoking
           HTML::Entities::decode_entities, except that it respects the current setting of 'decode_entities'.

       set_filter()
           Sets a filter to be applied after tags were stripped.  It may accept  the  name  of  a  method  (like
           'filter_entities')  or  a  code ref.  By default, its value is 'filter_entities' if HTML::Entities is
           available or "undef" otherwise.

       set_auto_reset()
           Takes a boolean value.  If set to true, "parse" resets after each call (equivalent to calling "eof").
           Otherwise, the parser remembers its state from one call to "parse" to another, until you  call  "eof"
           explicitly.  Set to false by default.

       set_debug()
           Outputs  extensive debugging information on internal state during the parse.  Not intended to be used
           by anyone except the module maintainer.

       decode_entities()
       filter()
       auto_reset()
       debug()
           Readonly accessors for their respective settings.

   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

LICENSE

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under  the  same  terms  as  Perl
       itself.

perl v5.34.0                                       2022-02-06                                         Strip(3pm)