Replace non-html and replace it with correct syntax

Question

I have a source program that delivers text with non html tags and incorrect syntax. for example:

the <H>quick</> brown fox.
the <U>quick</> brown fox.
<H><U>The</> quick brown fox.
<H><U>The</> quick </> brown fox.

The out come should be someting like:

the quick brown fox.

the quick brown fox.

The quick brown fox.

The quick brown fox.

So the tags used are not html-valid, but also not closed as they should. I'm struggling to get this working in javascript.

started with something like:

var s = document.getElementById('root').innerHTML;
s = s.replace("&lt;H&gt;", "<b>");  
s = s.replace("&lt;h&gt;", "<b>");    
s = s.replace("&lt;/&gt;","</b>");   
document.getElementById('root').innerHTML = s;

root is the all containing div. The tags will appier in a div with class "label components", there will be multiple divs with class "label components" (and thus multiple times the incorrect tags on a page).

how can I best tackle this?

Answer 1

Probably easiest to write a small parser/processor that uses a stack to keep track of the tags that still need to be closed:

 const s1 = 'the <H>quick</> brown fox.'; const s2 = 'the <U>quick</> brown fox.'; const s3 = '<H><U>The</> quick brown fox.'; const s4 = '<H><U>The</> quick </> brown fox.'; const process = (s) => { const map = {'H': 'b', 'U': 'i'}; const stack = []; return s.replace(/<([AZ/])>/g, (_, t) => { if (map[t]) { stack.push(map[t]); return `<${map[t]}>`; } else { return `</${stack.pop()}>`; } }); }; console.log(process(s1)); console.log(process(s2)); console.log(process(s3)); console.log(process(s4));

Your third example still comes out to be invalid HTML, because of the fact that the number of opening and closing tags doesn't match. If that's more than just a mistake in your example, you'll be looking at a more complex solution, and would need to specify what the desired behavior is supposed to be.

Answer 2

In my opinion the best route in this case would be to open html document in editor like VS Code and use find and replace tool . You should also use HTMLHint exten sion for VS Code to highlight all the problems in html document.