Using Powershell Extensions to remove empty <p> tags from all rich text fields

Question

I need to remove empty <p> tags from all rich text fields in the content tree:

<p>&nbsp;</p>

I've done nothing myself with Sitecore Powershell Extensions so far, so I am not sure if this is possible.

I've created a saveitempipeline so that this can't happen anymore, but we have a lot of fields with empty <p> tags so I'd like to remove them with SPE.

Answer 1

You can use the below script to remove all empty p/P tags (having space or  ).

This script uses the HtmlDecode method of System.Web.HttpUtility class to decode single or multiple occurrences of   to an empty string and then Regex replaces p tags with or without spaces.

$items = Get-ChildItem "master:/sitecore/content" -Recurse -Language *

foreach($item in $items){
    Write-Host "Item  - " $item.Paths.Path
    foreach($field in $item.Fields){

        if($field.Type -eq "Rich Text"){

            $rawValue = $field.Value

            if($rawValue -like '*<p*'){
                $output = [System.Web.HttpUtility]::HtmlDecode($rawValue)
                $output =  $output -replace "(<(P|p)>)\s*(<\/(P|p)>)",'' #To remove <p></p> or <p> {HAVING SPACES IN BETWEEN} </p> or <P></P> or <P>  {HAVING SPACES IN BETWEEN}  </P>
                $output =  $output -replace "(<(P|p)\s*\/>)",''          #To remove self closed p tags e.g.  <p/> or <p         />

                $item.Editing.BeginEdit()
                $item.Fields[$field.Name].Value = $output
                $item.Editing.EndEdit()

                Write-Host "Field - " $field.Name 
                Write-Host ""
            }
        }
    }
}

Tested with

<p>p tag with text</p><p/><p /><p></p><div>hello</div><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

Output

<p>p tag with text</p><div>hello</div>

Answer 2

Here is another take at solving this problem.

• Use the HtmlAgilityPack (included with Sitecore) to parse the document
• Check for each required scenario with a function
• Save some time by only looking at known fields

Test Html

<div>Here is something</div>
<p></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp; </p>
<p> &nbsp;</p>
<p>  &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<div>Something here<p>  &nbsp;&nbsp;</p></div>
<p>Here is something interesting</p>
<ul>
    <li></li>
</ul>
<p><span></span></p>
<p><span>Some text</span></p>

Sample Script

function Remove-EmptyPTag {
    param(
        [string]$Text
    )
    $htmlDocument = New-Object -TypeName HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument
    $htmlDocument.LoadHtml($Text)
    $pNodes = $htmlDocument.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//p")
    foreach($x in $pNodes) {
        # If the node is completely empty then we should remove
        if([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($x.InnerText)) {
            $x.Remove()
            continue
        }
        # If the node is only made up of spaces then we should remove
        if($x.InnerText -match "^( |\s)*$") {
            $x.Remove()
            continue
        }
    }
    # Found that once the p node is removed you ended up with some empty nodes in the final document.
    $count = $htmlDocument.DocumentNode.ChildNodes.Count
    $nodes = [HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlNode[]]::new($count)
    $htmlDocument.DocumentNode.ChildNodes.CopyTo($nodes, 0)
    foreach($node in $nodes) { 
        if([string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($node.InnerText)) {
            $htmlDocument.DocumentNode.RemoveChild($node)
        }
    }

    $htmlDocument.DocumentNode.OuterHtml
}

Get-Item -Path "master:" -ID "{110D559F-DEA5-42EA-9C1C-8A5DF7E70EF9}" |
    ForEach-Object { $_.Content = Remove-EmptyPTag -Text $_.Content }