HTML Strip

Filter Elastic Compatible

Synopsis

Removes HTML tags from text fields while preserving the content between the tags.

Schema

- html_strip:
    field: <ident>
    description: <text>
    if: <script>
    ignore_failure: <boolean>
    ignore_missing: <boolean>
    on_failure: <processor[]>
    on_success: <processor[]>
    tag: <string>
    target_field: <ident>

Configuration

The following fields are used to define the processor:

Field	Required	Default	Description
field	Y	-	Source field containing HTML content
description	N	-	Documentation note
if	N	-	Conditional expression
ignore_failure	N	false	Skip processing errors
ignore_missing	N	false	Skip if input field missing
on_failure	N	-	Error handling processors
on_success	N	-	Success handling processors
tag	N	-	Identifier for logging
disabled	N	false	When true, the processor is skipped and the event continues to the next one. Lets you take a processor out of the path without removing its configuration
target_field	N	field	Output field for stripped text

Details

The processor maintains text readability by preserving whitespace and text flow, making it useful for extracting plain text content from HTML-formatted fields.

note

While removing the markup tags, the text order and spacing between elements are preserved.

The processor is useful for extracting text from user-submitted emails or web content to prepare the content for display formatting, textual analysis and search indexing, or natural language processing.

warning

The processor expects valid HTML input. Malformed HTML may produce unexpected results.

warning

No whitespace is inserted between elements. Only the text inside tags is kept, concatenated in document order, so <p>one</p><p>two</p> becomes onetwo — not one two. Any spacing you see in the result was already inside a text node.

Where word boundaries matter, follow this processor with a Gsub step, or strip the markup upstream.

Examples

Simple

Removing tags from HTML content...	{ "message": "<div>Hello <strong>World</strong>!</div>" } - html_strip: field: message
reveals the text content:	{ "message": "Hello World!" }

Complex

Handling nested tags and attributes...	{ "html": "<div class='content'><h1>Title</h1><p>Text with <em>emphasis</em> and <a href='#'>links</a></p></div>" } - html_strip: field: html target_field: text
yields clean text content:	{ "html": "<div class='content'><h1>Title</h1><p>Text with <em>emphasis</em> and <a href='#'>links</a></p></div>", "text": "TitleText with emphasis and links" }

Keep Original

Separating the original and stripped versions...	{ "content": "<p>First paragraph</p><p>Second paragraph</p>" } - html_strip: field: content target_field: plain_text
preserves the original HTML:	{ "content": "<p>First paragraph</p><p>Second paragraph</p>", "plain_text": "First paragraphSecond paragraph" }

Conditionals

Stripping HTML only when needed...	{ "message": "<span>Important notice</span>", "should_strip": true } - html_strip: field: message if: "ctx.should_strip == true"
continues execution:	{ "message": "Important notice", "should_strip": true }

Error Handling

Handling missing or invalid fields...	{ "other_field": "value" } - html_strip: field: html_content ignore_missing: true on_failure: - set: field: processing_status value: "field_missing"
continues execution:	{ "other_field": "value", "processing_status": "field_missing" }