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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T22:41:57+00:00

I’m using PHP’s DOMDocument to parse and normalize user-submitted HTML using the loadHTML method

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I’m using PHP’s DOMDocument to parse and normalize user-submitted HTML using the loadHTML method to parse the content then getting a well-formed result via saveHTML:

$dom= new DOMDocument();
$dom->loadHTML('<div><p>Hello World');
$well_formed= $dom->saveHTML(); 
echo($well_formed);

This does a beautiful job of parsing the fragment and adding the appropriate closing tags. The problem is that I’m also getting a bunch of tags I don’t want such as <!DOCTYPE>, <html>, <head> and <body>. I understand that every well-formed HTML document needs these tags, but the HTML fragment I’m normalizing is going to be inserted into an existing valid document.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    IN your case, you do not want to work with an HTML document, but with an HTML fragment — a portion of HTML code ;; which means DOMDocument is not quite what you need.

    Instead, I would rather use something like HTMLPurifier (quoting) :

    HTML Purifier is a standards-compliant
    HTML filter library written in PHP.
    HTML Purifier will not only remove all
    malicious code (better known as XSS)
    with a thoroughly audited, secure yet
    permissive whitelist, it will also
    make sure your documents are standards compliant, something only
    achievable with a comprehensive
    knowledge of W3C’s specifications.

    And, if you try your portion of code :

    <div><p>Hello World

    Using the demo page of HTMLPurifier, you get this clean HTML as an output :

    <div><p>Hello World</p></div>

    Much better, isn’t it ? 😉

    (Note that HTMLPurfier suppots a wide range of options, and that taking a look at its documentation might not hurt)

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