How to exclude <a> tags url to regex?

Question

The current code is excluding the test link but not the test url.

Please see my current code here:

var regexp = new RegExp( "\\b(" +  data.title + ")\\b(?![^<a]*>|[^<>]*</a>)"  , 'i');

This regex is used by searching words from the content: test

Example Output: This is a test page. The word 'test' will be highlighted and will be linked somewhere base on my dictionary.

Issue: If the content have this HTML tag. The URL with the word test will be highlighted as well and result to broken tags. URL should be excluded to regex.

Example: This is a <a href="https://sample.com/to-test/">test</a>

Please see the link of regex: https://regex101.com/r/aamuTy/3

Answer 1

One option to exclude the text in <a> tag is https://regex101.com/r/aamuTy/4

Pattern: <a.*?</a>|\b(estoppel)\b

Explanation:

• First try to match any content within <a>..</a> tag.
• If the first pattern failed then match with the alternate, \b(estoppel)\b . This way Group 1 will be available only if the second part of the pattern matches. We can only work on the values captured in Group1.