Sanitize HTML using PHP and the DOMDocument

clean_html.php

<?php
/**
 * Clean HTML string removing all element attributes and elements which are 
 * not in the provided whitelist (but keeping their allowed children).
 *
 * @see https://github.com/alixaxel/phunction/blob/master/phunction/HTML.php
 * @param string $html to clean
 * @param array $whitelist
 */
function clean_html($html, array $whitelist)
{
	libxml_use_internal_errors(true) AND libxml_clear_errors();

	if (is_object($html)) {

		if ($html->hasChildNodes()) {
			foreach (range($html->childNodes->length - 1, 0) as $i) {
				clean_html($html->childNodes->item($i), $whitelist);
			}
		}

		if ( ! in_array($html->nodeName, $whitelist)) {

			$fragment = $html->ownerDocument->createDocumentFragment();

			while ($html->childNodes->length > 0) {
			    $fragment->appendChild($html->childNodes->item(0));
			}

			return $html->parentNode->replaceChild($fragment, $html);
		}

		while ($html->hasAttributes()) {
			$html->removeAttributeNode($html->attributes->item(0));
		}
		
	} else if($dom = DOMDocument::loadHTML($html)) {
		clean_html($dom->documentElement, $whitelist);
		return preg_replace('~<(?:!DOCTYPE|/?(?:html|body))[^>]*>\s*~i', '', $dom->saveHTML());
	}
}

test.php

<?php

$whitelist = array(
	'#text',
	'h3', 'h4', 'h5', 'h6',
	'blockquote', 'q', 'p',
	'pre', 'code', // Code
	'ul', 'ol', 'li',
	'b', 'em', 'i', 'u', 'strike', 'sup', 'sub',
	
	// Notice what is remove ↓ since attributes are not allowed
	//'a' => array('href', 'title'), 'img' => array('src', 'alt', 'title'),
);


$string = <<<END
<div id="hello">
	Hello World!
	<div>
		<p><span>text</span> goes here</p>

		<a href="javascript:alert(document.location);">XSS</a> and normal text.
		<b style="width: expression(alert(document.location));">XSS</b> is bad.

	</div>
	<br>
</div>
END;


print clean_html($string, $whitelist);

/* Output:
Hello World!
	
		<p>text goes here</p>

		XSS and normal text.
		<b>XSS</b> is bad.
*/

Could the final part of the function be rewritten not to require a regex?

e.g.

$html     = '';
$body     = $dom->getElementsByTagName('body');
$children = $body->item(0)->childNodes;
foreach($children as $child){
    $html .= $child->ownerDocument->saveHtml($child);
}

You saved my day.