php - Remove all attributes except href and target (if target != '') from all anchor tags

Solution:

Try with the following regex:

preg_replace('/(\s?target=(?:""))?(\srel.+")\s?/', ' ', $content)
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I only tested with the two examples you have provided, if not working for some patterns please share some examples.

note: Online demo for testing

Solution:

You can take a different approach. Like extract only thetarget attribute and the element content then create a new element with them.

$content   = '<a href="https://example.com/abc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">click here</a>';

// Extract the content.

$value     = array();
$has_value = preg_match( '/<[^<>]+>([^<>]*)<\/[^<>]+>/', $content, $value );

if ( $has_value ) {
    $value = $value[1];
} else {
    $value = '';
}

// Extract the target attribute.

$target_attr = array();
$has_target  = preg_match( '/[\s<]target="[^"]+"[\s>]/', $content, $target_attr );

if ( $has_target ) {
    $target_attr = $target_attr[0];
} else {
    $target_attr = '';
}

$new_content = "<a $target_attr>$value</a>";
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Output:

<a  target="_blank" >click here</a>
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Hope it helps :)