I'm having the below string in my node js.

var textToReplace = "Your <b class =\"b_1\">1</b> payment due is $4000.Your 
<b class =\"b_1\">2</b> payment due is $3500. Your <b class =\"b_1\">3</b> 
payment due is $5000.";

Here I want to replace <b class =\"b_1\">*</b> with ''. The output is Your 1 payment due is $4000.Your 2 payment due is $3500. Your 3 payment due is $5000..

If this is a normal replace I wouldn't have had any problem, but here I think the best way to replace is by using Regex. This is where I'm confused. In java we have a stringVariableName.replaceAll() method. please let me know how can I do this.

Thanks

I'm having the below string in my node js.

var textToReplace = "Your <b class =\"b_1\">1</b> payment due is $4000.Your 
<b class =\"b_1\">2</b> payment due is $3500. Your <b class =\"b_1\">3</b> 
payment due is $5000.";

Here I want to replace <b class =\"b_1\">*</b> with ''. The output is Your 1 payment due is $4000.Your 2 payment due is $3500. Your 3 payment due is $5000..

If this is a normal replace I wouldn't have had any problem, but here I think the best way to replace is by using Regex. This is where I'm confused. In java we have a stringVariableName.replaceAll() method. please let me know how can I do this.

Thanks

• javascript
• node.js
• regex
• string
• replace

• var newString = textToReplace.replace(/<b.*?\/b>\s*/g, '');. Regex101 example. Read about the global modifier and the non-greedy regexps. – ibrahim mahrir Commented May 15, 2017 at 15:45
• @ibrahimmahrir, Thanks for the quick reply. my bad, I actually forgot the actual replaced string, can you please look into my updated question. – user3872094 Commented May 15, 2017 at 15:50
• 1 var newString = textToReplace.replace(/<b.*?>(.*?)<\/b>/g, '$1');. Regex101 example. – ibrahim mahrir Commented May 15, 2017 at 15:52

4 Answers 4

var newString = textToReplace.replace(/<b.*?>(.*?)<\/b>/g, '$1');

Explanation:

<b.*?> : matches the <b ...> opening tag (using the non-greedy quantifier to match as few as possible)
(.*?)  : matches the content of the <b></b> tag (should be grouped so it will be used as a replacement text), it uses the non-greedy quantifier too.
<\/b>  : matches the closing tag
g      : global modifier to match as many as possible

then we replace the whole match with the first captured group $1 which represents the content of the <b></b> tag.

Example:

var str = "Your <b class =\"b_1\">1</b> payment due is $4000.Your <b class =\"b_1\">2</b> payment due is $3500. Your <b class =\"b_1\">3</b> payment due is $5000.";

var newString = str.replace(/<b.*?>(.*?)<\/b>/g, "$1");

console.log(newString);

Regex101 example.

You don't necessarily need a RegEx for this but using jQuery you can easily remove the children and return the HTML using a classic one-liner:

textReplaced = $('<div>').html(textToReplace).children().remove().end().html();

A working fiddle here - https://jsfiddle/7cgb51ju/

I would use something like this :

textToReplace.replace(/<b class =\"b_1\">[0-9]+<\/b>/g, '');

You just need to use Regex capturing groups with the following Regex /<b.*?>(.*?)<\/b>/g, you can then use it in your code like this:

var textToReplace = "Your <b class =\"b_1\">1</b> payment due is $4000.Your <b class =\"b_1\">2</b> payment due is $3500. Your <b class =\"b_1\">3</b> payment due is $5000.";


console.log(textToReplace.replace(/<b.*?>(.*?)<\/b>/g, '$1'));

And here '$1' will preserve the first captured group for (.*?).