Sanitize¶ ↑

Sanitize is a whitelist-based HTML sanitizer. Given a list of acceptable elements and attributes, Sanitize will remove all unacceptable HTML from a string.

Using a simple configuration syntax, you can tell Sanitize to allow certain elements, certain attributes within those elements, and even certain URL protocols within attributes that contain URLs. Any HTML elements or attributes that you don’t explicitly allow will be removed.

Because it’s based on Hpricot, a full-fledged HTML parser, rather than a bunch of fragile regular expressions, Sanitize has no trouble dealing with malformed or maliciously-formed HTML. When in doubt, Sanitize always errs on the side of caution.

Author

Ryan Grove (ryan@wonko.com)

Version

1.0.8 (2009-04-23)

Copyright

Copyright © 2009 Ryan Grove. All rights reserved.

License

MIT License (opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php)

Website

github.com/rgrove/sanitize

• RubyGems

• Hpricot 0.6+

If you don’t specify any configuration options, Sanitize will use its strictest settings by default, which means it will strip all HTML.

require 'rubygems'
require 'sanitize'

html = '<b><a href="http://foo.com/">foo</a></b><img src="http://foo.com/bar.jpg" />'

Sanitize.clean(html) # => 'foo'

In addition to the ultra-safe default settings, Sanitize comes with three other built-in modes.

Allows only very simple inline formatting markup. No links, images, or block elements.

Sanitize.clean(html, Sanitize::Config::RESTRICTED) # => '<b>foo</b>'

Allows a variety of markup including formatting tags, links, and lists. Images and tables are not allowed, links are limited to FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, and mailto protocols, and a rel="nofollow" attribute is added to all links to mitigate SEO spam.

Sanitize.clean(html, Sanitize::Config::BASIC)
# => '<b><a href="http://foo.com/" rel="nofollow">foo</a></b>'

Allows an even wider variety of markup than BASIC, including images and tables. Links are still limited to FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, and mailto protocols, while images are limited to HTTP and HTTPS. In this mode, rel="nofollow" is not added to links.

Sanitize.clean(html, Sanitize::Config::RELAXED)
# => '<b><a href="http://foo.com/">foo</a></b><img src="http://foo.com/bar.jpg" />'

If the built-in modes don’t meet your needs, you can easily specify a custom configuration:

Sanitize.clean(html, :elements => ['a', 'span'],
    :attributes => {'a' => ['href', 'title'], 'span' => ['class']},
    :protocols => {'a' => {'href' => ['http', 'https', 'mailto']}})

Array of element names to allow. Specify all names in lowercase.

:elements => [
  'a', 'b', 'blockquote', 'br', 'cite', 'code', 'dd', 'dl', 'dt', 'em',
  'i', 'li', 'ol', 'p', 'pre', 'q', 'small', 'strike', 'strong', 'sub',
  'sup', 'u', 'ul'
]

Attributes to allow for specific elements. Specify all element names and attributes in lowercase.

:attributes => {
  'a'          => ['href', 'title'],
  'blockquote' => ['cite'],
  'img'        => ['alt', 'src', 'title']
}

If you’d like to allow certain attributes on all elements, use the symbol :all instead of an element name.

:attributes => {
  :all => ['class'],
  'a'  => ['href', 'title']
}

Attributes to add to specific elements. If the attribute already exists, it will be replaced with the value specified here. Specify all element names and attributes in lowercase.

:add_attributes => {
  'a' => {'rel' => 'nofollow'}
}

URL protocols to allow in specific attributes. If an attribute is listed here and contains a protocol other than those specified (or if it contains no protocol at all), it will be removed.

:protocols => {
  'a'   => {'href' => ['ftp', 'http', 'https', 'mailto']},
  'img' => {'src'  => ['http', 'https']}
}

If you’d like to allow the use of relative URLs which don’t have a protocol, include the symbol :relative in the protocol array:

:protocols => {
  'a' => {'href' => ['http', 'https', :relative]}
}

The following lovely people have contributed to Sanitize in the form of patches or ideas that later became code:

• Ryan Grove <ryan@wonko.com>

• Adam Hooper <adam@adamhooper.com>

• Mutwin Kraus <mutle@blogage.de>

• Dev Purkayastha <dev.purkayastha@gmail.com>

• Ben Wanicur <bwanicur@verticalresponse.com>

Copyright © 2009 Ryan Grove <ryan@wonko.com>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the ‘Software’), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.