Question

I’m using Jsoup to try to clean up pretty much all the html from a document but white list a span tag with a specific class.

I’ve got this, but obviously this ends allowing all spans with attr class

String html = "<p><strong>Lorem ipsum dolor<br /> sit amet</strong></p>"+
"<span class=\"killme\">Aenean</span> quam sem" +
"<span class=\"whitelistme\">lacinia molestie</span> nibh mattis ";

String clean = Jsoup.clean(html, 
                     Whitelist.none()
                     .addTags("span")
                     .addAttributes("span", "class"));

Is there a way to clean all html except the <span class=”whitelistme”> ?

so my end result will be

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
Aenean quam sem
<span class="whitelistme">lacinia molestie</span> nibh mattis

Answer 1

Sticking to Jsoup solution, you can try following steps, but it is hardcode:

1. Extract all value elements from text to a list.
2. Extract all values from span elements to another list.
3. Modify text values with appended mark, like OMG_value.
4. Remove all html tags from text.
5. Iterate and replace all OMG_values with value from saved list.

If you find another solution – stick to it. This is a hardcode savior from your cruel CEO.