[php]remove html code from string - php

Question

in this variable: $this->item->text I have this string:
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<div class="itp-fshare-floating" id="itp-fshare" style="position:fixed; top:30px !important; left:50px !important;"></div><p>Lorem Ipsum è un testo segnaposto utilizzato nel settore della tipografia e della stampa. Lorem Ipsum è considerato il testo segnaposto standard sin dal sedicesimo secolo, quando un anonimo tipografo prese una cassetta di caratteri e li assemblòdei fogli di caratteri trasferibili “Letraset”,</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="easy_img_caption" style="display:inline-block;line-height:0.5;vertical-align:top;background-color:#F2F2F2;text-align:left;width:150px;float:left;margin:0px 10px;"><img src="/joomla/plugins/content/imagesresizecache/8428e9c26f1d8498ece730c0aa6aa023.jpeg" border="0" alt="1" title="1" style="width:150px; height:120px; ;margin:0;" /><span class="easy_img_caption_inner" style="display:inline-block;line-height:normal;color:#000000;font-size:8pt;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;padding:4px 8px;margin:0px;">1</span></span></p>
<p>che contenevano passaggi del Lorem Ipsum, e più recentemente da software di impaginazione come Aldus PageMaker</p>
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<div class="cp_tags">
<span class="cp_tag_label">Tags: </span><span class="cp_tag cp_tag_6">Recensioni
</span> </div>
So with this code I extract
<span class="easy_img_caption......></span>
Code (I am using this library called phpQuery http://goo.gl/rSu3k):
include_once('includes/phpQuery.php');
$doc = phpQuery::newDocument($this->item->text);
$extraction=pq('.easy_img_caption:eq(0)')->htmlOuter();
echo"<textarea>".$extraction."</textarea>";
So my question is:
How can I remove $extraction string from $this->item->text?
Thank you.

Answer 1

I'll assume phpQuery is some library aiding with dom-parsing in php?
Anyway, to accomplish this, you don't exactly need this external library. It can easily be accomplished with a regular expression replace:
$text = preg_replace('/<span.*?class="[^"]*?easy_img_caption[^"]*?".*?>.*?<\/span>/s', '', $this->item->text);
echo "<textarea>" . $text . "</textarea>";