HTML Tag Regex Pattern

Match opening and closing HTML tags including self-closing tags using regex. Extract tag names, attributes, and content.

The Pattern

/<\/?[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]*(?:\s[^>]*)?\/?>/g

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How It Works

Token	Meaning
`<`	Opening angle bracket
`\/?`	Optional forward slash (for closing tags)
`[a-zA-Z]`	Tag name must start with a letter
`[a-zA-Z0-9]*`	Rest of tag name (letters and digits)
`(?:\s[^>]*)?`	Optional attributes (space followed by non-closing bracket characters)
`\/?>`	Optional self-closing slash and closing bracket

Test Cases

✅<div>Match

✅</div>Match

✅<br/>Match

✅<img src="x.png" />Match

✅<p class="text">Match

❌plain textNo match

❌< notag>No match

Code Examples

javascript

const htmlTagRegex = /<\/?[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]*(?:\s[^>]*)?\/?>/ g;
const html = '<div class="test"><p>Hello</p><br/></div>';
const matches = html.match(htmlTagRegex);
console.log(matches); // ["<div class=\"test\">", "<p>", "</p>", "<br/>", "</div>"]

python

import re
html_tag_regex = r'</?[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]*(?:\s[^>]*)?\/? >'
html = '<div class="test"><p>Hello</p><br/></div>'
matches = re.findall(html_tag_regex, html)
print(matches)  # ['<div class="test">', '<p>', '</p>', '<br/>', '</div>']

Common Use Cases

HTML parsing - extract tags from HTML documents
Content sanitization - find and filter HTML tags
Template analysis - identify tag usage patterns
Migration tools - convert HTML tag formats

Related Patterns

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