Removing HTML tags and reordering text

[afhealey]

Howdy folks,

I have a situation where a text string is being imported that could contain hyperlinks (it might not contain any, or it could contain several). What I want to do is extract the text and format the link to be contained within brackets after the hyperlinked text. For example:

<p>This is some text</p>
<p><a href="http://www.google.com" rel="nofollow">Google link</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="http://www.bing.com/" rel="nofollow">Bing link</a></p>

This is some text

Google link (http://www.google.com)

Bing link (www.bing.com)

I can strip all the tags without issue, but I need to keep the destination URL as well and would like to format it nicely.

Is there a straightforward way to do this?

[v-yingjl · Accepted solution]

Hi @afhealey ,

You can splilt column many times by specific string and filter the specfic string to achieve this in power query. The whole query would be like this:

let
    Source = Table.FromRows(Json.Document(Binary.Decompress(Binary.FromText("i45Wiik1MDBOLgBTqSEZmcUKQFScn5uqUJJaUQKR1YdKx+ShqIZwEhUyilLTbGOUMkpKCqz09cvLy/XS8/PTc1L1kvNzY5QUilJzgLJ5+Wn5OTn55TEQG1PdwUoUcjLzsqGWJCKbisNKBTIdlJSZlw5yjj5O9zgBVRB0jVJsLAA=", BinaryEncoding.Base64), Compression.Deflate)), let _t = ((type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true]) in type table [Data = _t]),
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Source,{{"Data", type text}}),
    #"Split Column by Delimiter" = Table.ExpandListColumn(Table.TransformColumns(#"Changed Type", {{"Data", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter("<p>", QuoteStyle.Csv), let itemType = (type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true] in type {itemType}}}), "Data"),
    #"Split Column by Delimiter1" = Table.ExpandListColumn(Table.TransformColumns(#"Split Column by Delimiter", {{"Data", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter(" ", QuoteStyle.Csv), let itemType = (type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true] in type {itemType}}}), "Data"),
    #"Changed Type1" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Split Column by Delimiter1",{{"Data", type text}}),
    #"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Changed Type1", each Text.Contains([Data], "href")),
    #"Split Column by Delimiter2" = Table.ExpandListColumn(Table.TransformColumns(#"Filtered Rows", {{"Data", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter("=", QuoteStyle.Csv), let itemType = (type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true] in type {itemType}}}), "Data"),
    #"Changed Type2" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Split Column by Delimiter2",{{"Data", type text}}),
    #"Filtered Rows1" = Table.SelectRows(#"Changed Type2", each not Text.Contains([Data], "href"))
in
    #"Filtered Rows1"

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Yingjie Li
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[CNENFRNL]

I really doubt Power Query would cope with it with ease considering following cases in practice, CAPITAL letters, arbitary blank spaces, etc,

<A HREF = "http://www.google.com" REL="nofollow">Google link</A>
<a href="http://www.google.com" rel="nofollow">Google link</a>
<a href= 'http://www.yahoo.com' rel="nofollow">Yahoo link</a>

 Resort to regular expression with embedded R or Python script using such a pattern,

(?<=href)(?:[^"\']*)(?P<DELIM>["\'])(?P<LINK>.*?)(?P=DELIM)