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 Nokogiri, a full-fledged HTML parser, rather than a bunch of fragile regular expressions, Sanitize has no trouble dealing with malformed or maliciously-formed HTML, and will always output valid HTML or XHTML.

Author

Ryan Grove ([email protected])

Version

1.2.1 (2010-04-20)

Copyright

Copyright © 2010 Ryan Grove. All rights reserved.

License

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

Website

github.com/rgrove/sanitize

Requires

  • Nokogiri ~> 1.4.1

  • libxml2 >= 2.7.2

Installation

Latest stable release:

gem install sanitize

Latest development version:

gem install sanitize --pre

Usage

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

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'

Configuration

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

Sanitize::Config::RESTRICTED

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

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

Sanitize::Config::BASIC

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>'

Sanitize::Config::RELAXED

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" />'

Custom Configuration

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']}})

:add_attributes (Hash)

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'}
}

:attributes (Hash)

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']
}

:allow_comments (boolean)

Whether or not to allow HTML comments. Allowing comments is strongly discouraged, since IE allows script execution within conditional comments. The default value is false.

:elements (Array)

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'
]

:output (Symbol)

Output format. Supported formats are :html and :xhtml, defaulting to :xhtml.

:output_encoding (String)

Character encoding to use for HTML output. Default is 'utf-8'.

:protocols (Hash)

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]}
}

:remove_contents (boolean or Array)

If set to true, Sanitize will remove the contents of any non-whitelisted elements in addition to the elements themselves. By default, Sanitize leaves the safe parts of an element’s contents behind when the element is removed.

If set to an Array of element names, then only the contents of the specified elements (when filtered) will be removed, and the contents of all other filtered elements will be left behind.

The default value is false.

:transformers

See below.

Transformers

Transformers allow you to filter and alter nodes using your own custom logic, on top of (or instead of) Sanitize’s core filter. A transformer is any object that responds to call() (such as a lambda or proc) and returns either nil or a Hash containing certain optional response values.

To use one or more transformers, pass them to the :transformers config setting:

Sanitize.clean(html, :transformers => [transformer_one, transformer_two])

Input

Each registered transformer’s call() method will be called once for each element node in the HTML, and will receive as an argument an environment Hash that contains the following items:

:config

The current Sanitize configuration Hash.

:node

A Nokogiri::XML::Node object representing an HTML element.

:node_name

The name of the current HTML node, always lowercase (e.g. “div” or “span”).

Processing

Each transformer has full access to the Nokogiri::XML::Node that’s passed into it and to the rest of the document via the node’s document() method. Any changes will be reflected instantly in the document and passed on to subsequently-called transformers and to Sanitize itself. A transformer may even call Sanitize internally to perform custom sanitization if needed.

Nodes are passed into transformers in the order in which they’re traversed. It’s important to note that Nokogiri traverses markup from the deepest node upward, not from the first node to the last node:

html        = '<div><span>foo</span></div>'
transformer = lambda{|env| puts env[:node].name }

# Prints "span", then "div".
Sanitize.clean(html, :transformers => transformer)

Transformers have a tremendous amount of power, including the power to completely bypass Sanitize’s built-in filtering. Be careful!

Output

A transformer may return either nil or a Hash. A return value of nil indicates that the transformer does not wish to act on the current node in any way. A returned Hash may contain the following items, all of which are optional:

:attr_whitelist

Array of attribute names to add to the whitelist for the current node, in addition to any whitelisted attributes already defined in the current config.

:node

A Nokogiri::XML::Node object that should replace the current node. All subsequent transformers and Sanitize itself will receive this new node.

:whitelist

If true, the current node (and only the current node) will be whitelisted, regardless of the current Sanitize config.

:whitelist_nodes

Array of specific Nokogiri::XML::Node objects to whitelist, anywhere in the document, regardless of the current Sanitize config.

Example: Transformer to whitelist YouTube video embeds

The following example demonstrates how to create a Sanitize transformer that will safely whitelist valid YouTube video embeds without having to blindly allow other kinds of embedded content, which would be the case if you tried to do this by just whitelisting all <object>, <embed>, and <param> elements:

lambda do |env|
  node      = env[:node]
  node_name = env[:node_name]
  parent    = node.parent

  # Since the transformer receives the deepest nodes first, we look for a
  # <param> element or an <embed> element whose parent is an <object>.
  return nil unless (node_name == 'param' || node_name == 'embed') &&
      parent.name.to_s.downcase == 'object'

  if node_name == 'param'
    # Quick XPath search to find the <param> node that contains the video URL.
    return nil unless movie_node = parent.search('param[@name="movie"]')[0]
    url = movie_node['value']
  else
    # Since this is an <embed>, the video URL is in the "src" attribute. No
    # extra work needed.
    url = node['src']
  end

  # Verify that the video URL is actually a valid YouTube video URL.
  return nil unless url =~ /^http:\/\/(?:www\.)?youtube\.com\/v\//

  # We're now certain that this is a YouTube embed, but we still need to run
  # it through a special Sanitize step to ensure that no unwanted elements or
  # attributes that don't belong in a YouTube embed can sneak in.
  Sanitize.clean_node!(parent, {
    :elements   => ['embed', 'object', 'param'],
    :attributes => {
      'embed'  => ['allowfullscreen', 'allowscriptaccess', 'height', 'src', 'type', 'width'],
      'object' => ['height', 'width'],
      'param'  => ['name', 'value']
    }
  })

  # Now that we're sure that this is a valid YouTube embed and that there are
  # no unwanted elements or attributes hidden inside it, we can tell Sanitize
  # to whitelist the current node (<param> or <embed>) and its parent
  # (<object>).
  {:whitelist_nodes => [node, parent]}
end

Contributors

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

License

Copyright © 2010 Ryan Grove <[email protected]>

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.