Cleaning HTML Out of catalogFill Exports Without Leaving Garbage Behind

Stripping HTML tags during export is only half the job. If the source fields contain entities such as  , the exported result may still look messy even after the tags are gone.

Typical starting point

$cf_config['exp_strip_tags'] = true;

This removes the tags, but it does not guarantee clean plain text. Content such as:

<p>Text.&nbsp;More text.&nbsp;End.</p>

may still export with awkward spacing or encoded debris.

What to add

After tag stripping, normalize entities and repeated whitespace. Export cleanup should be a two-step process:

• remove markup
• normalize the remaining text

$value = strip_tags($value);
$value = html_entity_decode($value, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
$value = preg_replace('/\s+/u', ' ', $value);
$value = trim($value);

This produces export text that is actually usable in feeds, spreadsheets, and external marketplaces instead of merely being tag-free.