The balanceTags() WordPress PHP function balances the HTML tags in a text. It operates based on the ‘use_balanceTags’ option or can be forced to balance the tags regardless of the option’s value.
Usage
Let’s consider you have an HTML text with unbalanced tags. You can use the balanceTags() function to correct this:
$text = '<ul> <li>this <li>is <li>a <li>list </ul>'; echo balanceTags($text, true);
The output will be a corrected HTML:
<ul> <li>this </li><li>is </li><li>a </li><li>list </li></ul>
Parameters
- $text (string) Required: Text that needs balancing of tags.
- $force (bool) Optional: If true, forces balancing, ignoring the value of the option. Default: false.
More information
See WordPress Developer Resources: balanceTags()
This function is active as of the latest WordPress version. However, it’s important to note that the ‘use_balanceTags’ option has a default value of 0, and the admin UI for it was removed some years ago. Most developers will want to use force_balance_tags() instead of balanceTags().
Examples
Forcing balanceTags()
To force the function to balance the tags, pass true as the second argument:
$text = '<ul> <li>unbalanced <li>tags </ul>'; echo balanceTags($text, true); // This will balance the tags
Without forcing balanceTags()
If you don’t pass the second argument, the function will balance tags only if ‘use_balanceTags’ option is set to true:
$text = '<ul> <li>unbalanced <li>tags </ul>'; echo balanceTags($text); // This will balance the tags only if 'use_balanceTags' option is true
Balancing nested tags
The function can handle nested tags as well:
$text = '<div><p>unbalanced <p>tags </div>'; echo balanceTags($text, true); // This will balance the nested tags
Balancing multiple tag types
The function can balance multiple types of tags:
$text = '<div><p>unbalanced <li>tags </div>'; echo balanceTags($text, true); // This will balance the div, p, and li tags
Ignoring self-closing tags
The function will not affect self-closing tags like <img> or <br>:
$text = '<div><img src="image.jpg"><br>unbalanced <li>tags </div>'; echo balanceTags($text, true); // This will balance the div and li tags, but leave the img and br tags alone