How to remove links from text with SQL - sql

Question

I need to clean up a database by removing links from tables. So for column entry like this:
Thank you for the important information<br />Read More Here<br /> This is great.
i need to remove the entire link, so it would end up like this:
Thank you for the important information<br /><br /> This is great.
Is there a way to do this with a single UPDATE statement?
For extra credit, is there a way to remove the HTML semantics from the link, while leaving the content in the text?

Answer 1

Just try to find the starting and ending of the hrefj and replace it with a single space.
declare #StringToFix varchar(500)
set #StringToFix = 'Thank you for the important information<br /><a href="http://www.cnn.com">Read More'
select REPLACE(
#stringtofix
, Substring(#StringToFix
, CHARINDEX('<a href=', #StringToFix) -- Starting Point
-- End Point - Starting Point with 4 more spaces
, CHARINDEX('</a>', #StringToFix)
- CHARINDEX('<a href=', #StringToFix) +4 )
, ' '
) as ResultField

Answer 2

If all the links are done in a very consistent way than you can just use a regex replace of
'\<a href.*?\</a\>'
to an empty string.
I don't have SQL Server instance handy but the query in oracle would look something like:
update table
set col1 = REGEXP_REPLACE(col1,'\<a href.*?\</a\>', '', 1, 0, 'in');

Answer 3

I want share my sql script that remove ahref tag from text but leave anchor text.
Source text:
Visit Google, then Bing
Result text:
Visit Google, then Bing
MS SQL CODE:
declare #str nvarchar(max) = 'Visit Google, then Bing'
declare #aStart int = charindex('<a ', #str)
declare #aStartTagEnd int = charindex('>', #str, #aStart)
DECLARE #result nvarchar(max) = #str;
set #result = replace(#result, '</a>', '')
select #result
WHILE (#aStart > 0 and #aStartTagEnd > 0)
BEGIN
declare #rep1 nvarchar(max) = substring(#result, #aStart, #aStartTagEnd + 1 - #aStart)
set #result = replace(#result, #rep1, '')
set #aStart = charindex('<a ', #result)
set #aStartTagEnd = charindex('>', #result, #aStart)
END
select #result