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# strip_tags

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

strip_tags — Strip HTML and PHP tags from a string

### Description

string strip_tags ( string `$str` [, string `$allowable_tags` ] )

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

### Parameters

`str`

  The input string.

`allowable_tags`

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

  > Note:

  > HTML comments and PHP tags are also stripped. This is hardcoded and can not be changed with `allowable_tags`.

  > Note:

  > This parameter should not contain whitespace. strip_tags() sees a tag as a case-insensitive string between < and the first whitespace or >.

  > Note:

  > In PHP 5.3.4 and later, you will also need to include the self-closing XHTML tag to strip these from `str`. For example, to strip both <br> and <br/>, you should use:

  > `<?php
  > strip_tags($input, '<br><br/>');
  > ?>`

### Return Values

Returns the stripped string.

### Changelog

Version | Description
--- | ---
5.3.4 | strip_tags() no longer strips self-closing XHTML tags unless the self-closing XHTML tag is also given in `allowable_tags`.
5.0.0 | strip_tags() is now binary safe.

### Examples

Example #1 strip_tags() example

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

The above example will output:

    Test paragraph. Other text
    <p>Test paragraph.</p> <a href="#fragment">Other text</a>

### Notes

Warning

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

Warning

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.

> Note:

> Tag names within the input HTML that are greater than 1023 bytes in length will be treated as though they are invalid, regardless of the `allowable_tags` parameter.

### See Also

- htmlspecialchars() - Convert special characters to HTML entities

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