PHP strip_tags function

Like this blog? Consider exploring one of our sponsored banner ads...

strip_tags

(PHP 3 >= 3.0.8, PHP 4, PHP 5)

This function tries to return a string with all HTML and PHP tags
stripped from a given str. It uses
the same tag stripping state machine as the
fgetss() function.

You can use the optional second parameter to specify tags which
should not be stripped.

Note:
allowable_tags was added in PHP 3.0.13
and PHP 4.0.0.

Since PHP 4.3.0, HTML comments are also stripped. This is hardcoded and can
not be changed with allowable_tags.

Because strip_tags() does not actually validate the
HTML, partial, or broken tags can result in the removal of more
text/data than expected.

This function does not modify any attributes on the tags that you allow
using allowable_tags, including the
style and onmouseover attributes
that a mischievous user may abuse when posting text that will be shown
to other users.

Example 1. strip_tags() example

$text = '<p>Test paragraph.</p><!-- Comment --> <a href="#fragment">Other text</a>';
echo strip_tags($text);
echo "\n";
 
// Allow <p> and <a>
echo strip_tags($text, '<p><a>');

The above example will output:

strip_tags() has been binary safe since PHP 5.0.0

See also htmlspecialchars().