Stripping HTML from text in SQL Server–Version 3

 

I’ve used the HTML stripping function for SQL Server available in lazycoders.blogspot.com, which is the second version of the originally published in blog.sqlauthority.com. But neither one removes the comments in this case:

<!-- <b>hello world</b> --> Hello

which is more or less the code that MS Word generates.

Well, the function with that fixed is this (changes are in bold):

ALTER FUNCTION [dbo].[DeHtmlize]
(
@HTMLText varchar(MAX)
)
RETURNS varchar(MAX)
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @Start  int
DECLARE @End    int
DECLARE @Length int

-- Replace the HTML entity & with the '&' character (this needs to be done first, as
-- '&' might be double encoded as '&')
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('&', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 4
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1

WHILE (@Start > 0 AND @End > 0 AND @Length > 0) BEGIN
SET @HTMLText = STUFF(@HTMLText, @Start, @Length, '&')
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('&', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 4
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1
END

-- Replace the HTML entity &lt; with the '<' character
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('&lt;', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 3
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1

WHILE (@Start > 0 AND @End > 0 AND @Length > 0) BEGIN
SET @HTMLText = STUFF(@HTMLText, @Start, @Length, '<')
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('&lt;', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 3
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1
END

-- Replace the HTML entity &gt; with the '>' character
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('&gt;', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 3
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1

WHILE (@Start > 0 AND @End > 0 AND @Length > 0) BEGIN
SET @HTMLText = STUFF(@HTMLText, @Start, @Length, '>')
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('&gt;', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 3
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1
END

-- Replace the HTML entity &amp; with the '&' character
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('&amp;amp;', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 4
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1

WHILE (@Start > 0 AND @End > 0 AND @Length > 0) BEGIN
SET @HTMLText = STUFF(@HTMLText, @Start, @Length, '&')
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('&amp;amp;', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 4
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1
END

-- Replace the HTML entity &nbsp; with the ' ' character
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('&nbsp;', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 5
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1

WHILE (@Start > 0 AND @End > 0 AND @Length > 0) BEGIN
SET @HTMLText = STUFF(@HTMLText, @Start, @Length, ' ')
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('&nbsp;', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 5
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1
END

-- Replace any <br> tags with a newline
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('<br>', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 3
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1

WHILE (@Start > 0 AND @End > 0 AND @Length > 0) BEGIN
SET @HTMLText = STUFF(@HTMLText, @Start, @Length, CHAR(13) + CHAR(10))
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('<br>', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 3
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1
END

-- Replace any <br/> tags with a newline
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('<br/>', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 4
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1

WHILE (@Start > 0 AND @End > 0 AND @Length > 0) BEGIN
SET @HTMLText = STUFF(@HTMLText, @Start, @Length, 'CHAR(13) + CHAR(10)')
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('<br/>', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 4
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1
END

-- Replace any <br /> tags with a newline
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('<br />', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 5
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1

WHILE (@Start > 0 AND @End > 0 AND @Length > 0) BEGIN
SET @HTMLText = STUFF(@HTMLText, @Start, @Length, 'CHAR(13) + CHAR(10)')
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('<br />', @HTMLText)
SET @End = @Start + 5
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1
END

-- Remove anything between comments <!-- -->
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('<!--', @HTMLText)
SET @End = CHARINDEX('-->', @HTMLText, CHARINDEX('<!--', @HTMLText))
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 3

WHILE (@Start > 0 AND @End > 0 AND @Length > 0) BEGIN
SET @HTMLText = STUFF(@HTMLText, @Start, @Length, '')
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('<!--', @HTMLText)
SET @End = CHARINDEX('-->', @HTMLText, CHARINDEX('<!--', @HTMLText))
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 3
END

-- Remove anything between <whatever> tags
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('<', @HTMLText)
SET @End = CHARINDEX('>', @HTMLText, CHARINDEX('<', @HTMLText))
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1

WHILE (@Start > 0 AND @End > 0 AND @Length > 0) BEGIN
SET @HTMLText = STUFF(@HTMLText, @Start, @Length, '')
SET @Start = CHARINDEX('<', @HTMLText)
SET @End = CHARINDEX('>', @HTMLText, CHARINDEX('<', @HTMLText))
SET @Length = (@End - @Start) + 1
END

RETURN LTRIM(RTRIM(@HTMLText))

END

GO

Hope this helps. Enjoy!