String Manipulation Question

I am working on a project to create PDF's from HTML code. I am using DOMpdf to do the creation, and it works perfectly, but I do have a question about preparing the HTML code to be sent to DOMpdf.

If I have a variable, and it contains a string that is HTML code. How can I remove certain parts of that string? I know it is confusing, but here is an example.

Here is a sample of the HTML that I am working with:

<h1>This is a test page</h1>

<!--remove start-->
While the comb is open, you place the comb through the holes and close the plastic comb.<br><br>
<!--remove end-->

<p>...more text down here.</p>

Code (markup):

I want to remove all of the text beginning with <!--remove start--> and ending with <!--remove end-->. The problem I am having is that the text inside these 2 html comments is dynamic.

Is there anyway to remove that text using PHP?

 

ereg_replace is my personal favourite.

$string = ereg_replace('<!--removestart-->.*<!--removeend-->', '', $string);

Something along that lines, eregi_replace or the perl regex functions can also do this.

 

Thanks. Worked like a champ!

 

or, you can use a php simple function: strip_tags
string strip_tags ( string str [, string allowable_tags] )


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 4.0b3.

 

The preg_* functions are supposed to be alot more efficient than the ereg_* functions.

$string = preg_replace('~<!--removestart-->.*<!--removeend-->~Usi', '', $string);

Code (markup):