PHP function removing all empty html nodes from a given html fragment. Useful for cleaning content entered via WYSIWYG editors.

function.remove_empty_html_tags.php

<?php
function remove_empty_html_tags($html)
{
    /**
     * PHP function removing all empty html nodes from a given html fragment. Useful for cleaning content entered via WYSIWYG editors.
     * source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/42067229/53960
     * Regex by Mark Notton
     */
    $regex = '~<((?!iframe|canvas)\w+)[^>]*>(?>[\p{Z}\p{C}]|<br\b[^>]*>|&(?:(?:nb|thin|zwnb|e[nm])sp|zwnj|#xfeff|#xa0|#160|#65279);|(?R))*</\1>~iu';
    return preg_replace($regex, '', $html);
}