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How to remove HTML tags from REST API title in WordPress

WordPress supports HTML in fields that developers wouldn’t typically expect HTML in (e.g. post title). When you use the REST API to retrieve posts, the response body will include HTML, including HTML tags. This can be a problem if you are using the REST API to serve data to a non-HTML client, such as a mobile app or a JavaScript library.

To remove HTML tags from the REST API title, you can use the following code:

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class Customise_WordPress {

  function __construct($name) {
  // Remove the REST API HTML tags.
    $post_type = "post";
    add_filter( 'rest_prepare_'. $post_type, array( $this, 'decode_rest_api_title' ), 20, 3 );
  }
  
  /**
   * Decode HTML tags from the website title.
   *
   * @param string $response Actual response.
   * @param Object    $request Actual request.
   * @param Object    $post actual Post object.
   *
   * @return $response return text with decoded entirties.
   */
  public function decode_rest_api_title( $response, $post, $request ) {
    if ( isset( $post ) ) {
      $decoded_title = wp_strip_all_tags( $response->data['title']['rendered'] );
      $decoded_content = wp_strip_all_tags( $response->data['content']['rendered'] );
      $response->data['title']['rendered'] = $decoded_title;
      $response->data['content']['rendered'] = $decoded_content;
    }
    return $response;
  }
}

To use this code, simply copy and paste it into your theme’s functions.php file. Then, create a new instance of the Customise_WordPress class. For example:

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$customise_wordpress = new Customise_WordPress();

This will remove HTML tags from the REST API title for all posts.

You can also modify the code to only remove HTML tags from the REST API title for specific post types. For example, to only remove HTML tags from the REST API title for posts of the post type, you would change the following line:

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$post_type = "post";

to:

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$post_type = array('post');

You can also add additional filters to the add_filter() call to remove HTML tags from other fields in the REST API response. For example, to remove HTML tags from the REST API content, you would add the following filter:

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add_filter( 'rest_prepare_post_content', array( $this, 'decode_rest_api_content' ), 20, 3 );

The decode_rest_api_content() function would be similar to the decode_rest_api_title() function, but it would decode the content field instead of the title field.

Benefits of removing HTML tags from the REST API title

There are several benefits to removing HTML tags from the REST API title:

• It makes the REST API response more consistent and easier to parse.
• It reduces the risk of XSS attacks.
• It improves the performance of the REST API, as HTML tags need to be decoded before they can be used.

If you are using the REST API to serve data to a non-HTML client, I recommend that you remove HTML tags from the REST API title and other fields in the REST API response.

Thanks For Reading 🙏

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