Find and replace matching html tags

Question

I want to transform some of the opening and closing tags in an html document to other tags. That is I would like to transform

<div class='foo'> This is some text. </div>

to something like

 <p> This is some text </p>.

Is there a way to find and replace matching html tags?

Answer 1

Using nxml-mode, first customize nxml-sexp-element-mode to t. Then normal Emacs commands like forward-sexp, backward-sexp, and kill-sexp will work on elements, not just start or end tags.

Starting with "|<div class='foo'> This is some text. </div>" (where the | illustrates the cursor position), doing C-M-d C-M-k C-M-u C-M-k <p C-c C-i C-y M-y will replace the div with a paragraph. That's quite easy to record as a keyboard macro, although of course it'll only ever replace the tag after point with a paragraph; if you want more flexibility you'll have to write a function that prompts for the new tag to insert first.