htmlentities

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)

htmlentities — Convert all applicable characters to HTML entities

Description

string htmlentities ( string $string [, int $flags = ENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401 [, string $encoding = ini_get("default_charset") [, bool $double_encode = true ]]] )

This function is identical to htmlspecialchars() in all ways, except with htmlentities(), all characters which have HTML character entity equivalents are translated into these entities.

If you want to decode instead (the reverse) you can use html_entity_decode().

Parameters

string

The input string.

flags

A bitmask of one or more of the following flags, which specify how to handle quotes, invalid code unit sequences and the used document type. The default is ENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401.

**Available `flags` constants**
Constant Name	Description
`ENT_COMPAT`	Will convert double-quotes and leave single-quotes alone.
`ENT_QUOTES`	Will convert both double and single quotes.
`ENT_NOQUOTES`	Will leave both double and single quotes unconverted.
`ENT_IGNORE`	Silently discard invalid code unit sequences instead of returning an empty string. Using this flag is discouraged as it » may have security implications.
`ENT_SUBSTITUTE`	Replace invalid code unit sequences with a Unicode Replacement Character U+FFFD (UTF-8) or &#FFFD; (otherwise) instead of returning an empty string.
`ENT_DISALLOWED`	Replace invalid code points for the given document type with a Unicode Replacement Character U+FFFD (UTF-8) or &#FFFD; (otherwise) instead of leaving them as is. This may be useful, for instance, to ensure the well-formedness of XML documents with embedded external content.
`ENT_HTML401`	Handle code as HTML 4.01.
`ENT_XML1`	Handle code as XML 1.
`ENT_XHTML`	Handle code as XHTML.
`ENT_HTML5`	Handle code as HTML 5.

encoding

An optional argument defining the encoding used when converting characters.

If omitted, the default value of the encoding varies depending on the PHP version in use. In PHP 5.6 and later, the default_charset configuration option is used as the default value. PHP 5.4 and 5.5 will use UTF-8 as the default. Earlier versions of PHP use ISO-8859-1.

Although this argument is technically optional, you are highly encouraged to specify the correct value for your code if you are using PHP 5.5 or earlier, or if your default_charset configuration option may be set incorrectly for the given input.

The following character sets are supported:

**Supported charsets**
Charset	Aliases	Description
ISO-8859-1	ISO8859-1	Western European, Latin-1.
ISO-8859-5	ISO8859-5	Little used cyrillic charset (Latin/Cyrillic).
ISO-8859-15	ISO8859-15	Western European, Latin-9. Adds the Euro sign, French and Finnish letters missing in Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1).
UTF-8		ASCII compatible multi-byte 8-bit Unicode.
cp866	ibm866, 866	DOS-specific Cyrillic charset.
cp1251	Windows-1251, win-1251, 1251	Windows-specific Cyrillic charset.
cp1252	Windows-1252, 1252	Windows specific charset for Western European.
KOI8-R	koi8-ru, koi8r	Russian.
BIG5	950	Traditional Chinese, mainly used in Taiwan.
GB2312	936	Simplified Chinese, national standard character set.
BIG5-HKSCS		Big5 with Hong Kong extensions, Traditional Chinese.
Shift_JIS	SJIS, SJIS-win, cp932, 932	Japanese
EUC-JP	EUCJP, eucJP-win	Japanese
MacRoman		Charset that was used by Mac OS.
''		An empty string activates detection from script encoding (Zend multibyte), default_charset and current locale (see nl_langinfo() and setlocale()), in this order. Not recommended.

Note: Any other character sets are not recognized. The default encoding will be used instead and a warning will be emitted.

double_encode

When double_encode is turned off PHP will not encode existing html entities. The default is to convert everything.

Return Values

Returns the encoded string.

If the input string contains an invalid code unit sequence within the given encoding an empty string will be returned, unless either the ENT_IGNORE or ENT_SUBSTITUTE flags are set.

Changelog

Version	Description
5.6.0	The default value for the `encoding` parameter was changed to be the value of the default_charset configuration option.
5.4.0	The default value for the `encoding` parameter was changed to UTF-8.
5.4.0	The constants `ENT_SUBSTITUTE`, `ENT_DISALLOWED`, `ENT_HTML401`, `ENT_XML1`, `ENT_XHTML` and `ENT_HTML5` were added.
5.3.0	The constant `ENT_IGNORE` was added.
5.2.3	The `double_encode` parameter was added.

Examples

Example #1 A htmlentities() example


<?php
$str = "A 'quote' is <b>bold</b>";

// Outputs: A 'quote' is &lt;b&gt;bold&lt;/b&gt;
echo htmlentities($str);

// Outputs: A &#039;quote&#039; is &lt;b&gt;bold&lt;/b&gt;
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_QUOTES);
?>

Example #2 Usage of ENT_IGNORE


<?php
$str = "\x8F!!!";

// Outputs an empty string
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8");

// Outputs "!!!"
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_QUOTES | ENT_IGNORE, "UTF-8");
?>

User Contributed Notes

Sijmen Ruwhof

5 years ago


An important note below about using this function to secure your application against Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.

When printing user input in an attribute of an HTML tag, the default configuration of htmlEntities() doesn't protect you against XSS, when using single quotes to define the border of the tag's attribute-value. XSS is then possible by injecting a single quote:

<?php
$_GET['a'] = "#000' onload='alert(document.cookie)";
?>

XSS possible (insecure):

<?php
$href = htmlEntities($_GET['a']);
print "<body bgcolor='$href'>"; # results in: <body bgcolor='#000' onload='alert(document.cookie)'>
?>

Use the 'ENT_QUOTES' quote style option, to ensure no XSS is possible and your application is secure:

<?php
$href = htmlEntities($_GET['a'], ENT_QUOTES);
print "<body bgcolor='$href'>"; # results in: <body bgcolor='#000&#039; onload=&#039;alert(document.cookie)'>
?>

The 'ENT_QUOTES' option doesn't protect you against javascript evaluation in certain tag's attributes, like the 'href' attribute of the 'a' tag. When clicked on the link below, the given JavaScript will get executed:

<?php
$_GET['a'] = 'javascript:alert(document.cookie)';
$href = htmlEntities($_GET['a'], ENT_QUOTES);
print "<a href='$href'>link</a>"; # results in: <a href='javascript:alert(document.cookie)'>link</a>
?>

n at erui dot eu

4 years ago


html entities does not encode all unicode characters. It encodes what it can [all of latin1], and the others slip through. &#1033; is the nasty I use. I have searched for a function which encodes everything, but in the end I wrote this. This is as simple as I can get it. Consult an ansii table to custom include/omit chars you want/don't. I'm sure it's not that fast.

// Unicode-proof htmlentities. 
// Returns 'normal' chars as chars and weirdos as numeric html entites.
function superentities( $str ){
    // get rid of existing entities else double-escape
    $str = html_entity_decode(stripslashes($str),ENT_QUOTES,'UTF-8'); 
    $ar = preg_split('/(?<!^)(?!$)/u', $str );  // return array of every multi-byte character
    foreach ($ar as $c){
        $o = ord($c);
        if ( (strlen($c) > 1) || /* multi-byte [unicode] */
            ($o <32 || $o > 126) || /* <- control / latin weirdos -> */
            ($o >33 && $o < 40) ||/* quotes + ambersand */
            ($o >59 && $o < 63) /* html */
        ) {
            // convert to numeric entity
            $c = mb_encode_numericentity($c,array (0x0, 0xffff, 0, 0xffff), 'UTF-8');
        }
        $str2 .= $c;
    }
    return $str2;
}

q (dot) rendeiro (at) gmail (dot) com

9 years ago


I've seen lots of functions to convert all the entities, but I needed to do a fulltext search in a db field that had named entities instead of numeric entities (edited by tinymce), so I searched the tinymce source and found a string with the value->entity mapping. So, i wrote the following function to encode the user's query with named entities.

The string I used is different of the original, because i didn't want to convert ' or ". The string is too long, so I had to cut it. To get the original check TinyMCE source and search for nbsp or other entity ;)

<?php

$entities_unmatched = explode(',', '160,nbsp,161,iexcl,162,cent, [...] ');
$even = 1;
foreach($entities_unmatched as $c) {
    if($even) {
        $ord = $c;
    } else {
        $entities_table[$ord] = $c;
    }
    $even = 1 - $even;
}

function encode_named_entities($str) {
    global $entities_table;
    
    $encoded_str = '';
    for($i = 0; $i < strlen($str); $i++) {
        $ent = @$entities_table[ord($str{$i})];
        if($ent) {
            $encoded_str .= "&$ent;";
        } else {
            $encoded_str .= $str{$i};
        }
    }
    return $encoded_str;
}

?>

phil at lavin dot me dot uk

6 years ago


The following will make a string completely safe for XML:

<?php
function philsXMLClean($strin) {
        $strout = null;

        for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($strin); $i++) {
                $ord = ord($strin[$i]);

                if (($ord > 0 && $ord < 32) || ($ord >= 127)) {
                        $strout .= "&amp;#{$ord};";
                }
                else {
                        switch ($strin[$i]) {
                                case '<':
                                        $strout .= '&lt;';
                                        break;
                                case '>':
                                        $strout .= '&gt;';
                                        break;
                                case '&':
                                        $strout .= '&amp;';
                                        break;
                                case '"':
                                        $strout .= '&quot;';
                                        break;
                                default:
                                        $strout .= $strin[$i];
                        }
                }
        }

        return $strout;
}
?>

realcj at g mail dt com

9 years ago


If you are building a loadvars page for Flash and have problems with special chars such as " & ", " ' " etc, you should escape them for flash:



Try trace(escape("&")); in flash' actionscript to see the escape code for &;



% = %25

& = %26

' = %27



<?php

function flashentities($string){

return str_replace(array("&","'"),array("%26","%27"),$string);

}

?>



Those are the two that concerned me. YMMV.

Waygood

4 years ago


When putting values inside comment tags <!-- --> you should replace -- with &#45;&#45; too, as this would end your tag and show the rest of the comment.

keenskelly at gmail dot com

7 years ago


Correction to my previous post: the set of ENTITY declarations must be inside a <!DOCTYPE element; also &nbsp; is NOT pre-defined in XML and must be left in the entity list. I also extended the list with the windows 1252 character set using a sample function borrowed from php.net user comments and extended with euro entity which we need for our app. Here is the final code that is in our production app:



<?php



// Generate a list of entity declarations from the HTML_ENTITIES set that PHP knows about to dump into the document

function htmlentities_entities() {

        $output = "<!DOCTYPE html [\n";

        foreach (get_html_translation_table_CP1252(HTML_ENTITIES) as $value) {

                $name = substr($value, 1, strlen($value) - 2);

                switch ($name) {

                        // These ones we can skip because they're built into XML

                        case 'gt':

                        case 'lt':

                        case 'quot':

                        case 'apos':

                        case 'amp': break;

                        default: $output .= "<!ENTITY {$name} \"&{$name};\">\n";

                }

        }

        $output .= "]>\n";

        return($output);

}



// ref: http://php.net/manual/en/function.get-html-translation-table.php#76564

function get_html_translation_table_CP1252($type) {

        $trans = get_html_translation_table($type);

        $trans[chr(130)] = '&sbquo;';    // Single Low-9 Quotation Mark

        $trans[chr(131)] = '&fnof;';    // Latin Small Letter F With Hook

        $trans[chr(132)] = '&bdquo;';    // Double Low-9 Quotation Mark

        $trans[chr(133)] = '&hellip;';    // Horizontal Ellipsis

        $trans[chr(134)] = '&dagger;';    // Dagger

        $trans[chr(135)] = '&Dagger;';    // Double Dagger

        $trans[chr(136)] = '&circ;';    // Modifier Letter Circumflex Accent

        $trans[chr(137)] = '&permil;';    // Per Mille Sign

        $trans[chr(138)] = '&Scaron;';    // Latin Capital Letter S With Caron

        $trans[chr(139)] = '&lsaquo;';    // Single Left-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark

        $trans[chr(140)] = '&OElig;';    // Latin Capital Ligature OE

        $trans[chr(145)] = '&lsquo;';    // Left Single Quotation Mark

        $trans[chr(146)] = '&rsquo;';    // Right Single Quotation Mark

        $trans[chr(147)] = '&ldquo;';    // Left Double Quotation Mark

        $trans[chr(148)] = '&rdquo;';    // Right Double Quotation Mark

        $trans[chr(149)] = '&bull;';    // Bullet

        $trans[chr(150)] = '&ndash;';    // En Dash

        $trans[chr(151)] = '&mdash;';    // Em Dash

        $trans[chr(152)] = '&tilde;';    // Small Tilde

        $trans[chr(153)] = '&trade;';    // Trade Mark Sign

        $trans[chr(154)] = '&scaron;';    // Latin Small Letter S With Caron

        $trans[chr(155)] = '&rsaquo;';    // Single Right-Pointing Angle Quotation Mark

        $trans[chr(156)] = '&oelig;';    // Latin Small Ligature OE

        $trans[chr(159)] = '&Yuml;';    // Latin Capital Letter Y With Diaeresis

        $trans['euro'] = '&euro;';    // euro currency symbol

        ksort($trans);

        return $trans;

}



?>



[EDIT BY danbrown AT php DOT net: The user's original note contained the following text:



"So here's something fun: if you create an XML document in PHP and use htmlentities() to encode text data, then later want to read and parse the same document with PHP's xml_parse(), unless you include entity declarations into the generated document, the parser will stop on the unknown entities.



To account for this, I created a small function to take the translation table and turn it into XML <!ENTITY> definitions. I insert this output into the XML document immediately after the <?xml?> line and the parse errors magically vanish"

]

admin at wapforum dot rs

5 years ago


A useful little function to convert the symbols in the different inputs.
<?php
function ConvertSimbols($var, $ConvertQuotes = 0) {
if ($ConvertQuotes > 0) {
$var = htmlentities($var, ENT_NOQUOTES, 'UTF-8');
$var = str_replace('\"', '', $var);
$var = str_replace("\'", '', $var);
} else {
$var = htmlentities($var, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
}
return $var;
}
?>

Usage with quotes for example message:

$message = ConvertSimbols($message);

Usage without quotes for example link:

$link = ConvertSimbols($link, 1);

hajo-p

2 years ago


The flag ENT_HTML5 also strips newline chars like \n with htmlentities while htmlspecialchars is not affected by that.

If you want to use nl2br on that string afterwards you might end up searching the problem like i did. This does not apply to other flags like e.g. ENT_XHTML which confused me.

Tested this with PHP 5.4 / 5.5 / 5.6-dev with same results, so it seems that this is an intended "feature".

robin at robinwinslow dot co dot uk

5 years ago


htmlentities seems to have changed at some point between version 5.1.6 and 5.3.3, such that it now returns an empty string for anything containing a pound sign:

$ php -v
PHP 5.1.6 (cli) (built: May 22 2008 09:08:44)
$ php -r "echo htmlentities('£hello', null, 'utf-8');"
&pound;hello
$

$ php -v
PHP 5.3.3 (cli) (built: Aug 19 2010 12:07:49)
$ php -r "echo htmlentities('£hello', null, 'utf-8');"
$

(Returns an empty string the second time)

Just a heads up.

2 years ago


For use of html  tags, ampersands, etc. in xml document

(f.e.

<xml>

<xmltag1><span class="data1"> data 1</span> & data2</xmltag1>

</xml>

)

one can use the CDATA brackets:

<xmltag1><![CDATA[<span class="data1"> data 1</span> & data2]]></xmltag1>

-rq

steve at mcdragonsoftware dot com

4 years ago


I'm glad 5.4 has xml support, but many of us are working with older installations, some of us still have to use PHP4. If you're like me you've been frustrated with trying to use htmlentites/htmlspecial chars with xml output. I was hoping to find an option to force numeric encoding, lacking that, I have written my own xmlencode function, which I now offer:



usage: 



$string xmlencode( $string )



it will use htmlspecialchars for the valid xml entities amp, quote, lt, gt, (apos) and return the numeric entity for all other non alpha-numeric characters.



-------------------------------------------



<?php 

if( !function_exists( 'xmlentities' ) ) {

    function xmlentities( $string ) {

        $not_in_list = "A-Z0-9a-z\s_-";

        return preg_replace_callback( "/[^{$not_in_list}]/" , 'get_xml_entity_at_index_0' , $string );

    }

    function get_xml_entity_at_index_0( $CHAR ) {

        if( !is_string( $CHAR[0] ) || ( strlen( $CHAR[0] ) > 1 ) ) {

            die( "function: 'get_xml_entity_at_index_0' requires data type: 'char' (single character). '{$CHAR[0]}' does not match this type." );

        }

        switch( $CHAR[0] ) {

            case "'":    case '"':    case '&':    case '<':    case '>':

                return htmlspecialchars( $CHAR[0], ENT_QUOTES );    break;

            default:

                return numeric_entity_4_char($CHAR[0]);                break;

        }        

    }

    function numeric_entity_4_char( $char ) {

        return "&#".str_pad(ord($char), 3, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT).";";

    }    

}

?>

ustimenko dot alexander at gmail dot com

4 years ago


For those Spanish (and not only) folks, that want their national letters back after htmlentities :)

<?php
protected function _decodeAccented($encodedValue, $options = array()) {
    $options += array(
        'quote'     => ENT_NOQUOTES,
        'encoding'  => 'UTF-8',
    );
    return preg_replace_callback(
        '/&\w(acute|uml|tilde);/',
        create_function(
            '$m',
            'return html_entity_decode($m[0], ' . $options['quote'] . ', "' .
            $options['encoding'] . '");'
        ),
        $encodedValue
    );
}
?>

wd at NOSPAMwd dot it

4 years ago


Hi there,

after several and several tests, I figured out that dot:

- htmlentities() function remove characters like "à","è",etc when you specify a flag and a charset

- htmlentities() function DOES NOT remove characters like those above when you DO NOT specify anything

So, let's assume that..

<?php

$str = "Hèèèllooo";

$res_1 = htmlentities($str, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8");
$res_2 = htmlentities($str);

echo var_dump($res_1); // Result: string '' (length=0)
echo var_dump($res_2); // string 'H&egrave;&egrave;&egrave;llooo' (length=30)

?>

I used this for a textarea content for comments. Anyway, note that using the "$res_2" form the function will leave unconverted single/double quotes. At this point you should use str_replace() function to perform the characters but be careful because..

<?php

$str = "'Hèèèllooo'";

$res_2 = str_replace("'","&#039;",$str);
$res_2 = htmlentities($str);
echo var_dump($res_2); // string '&amp;#039;H&egrave;&egrave;&egrave;llooo&amp;#039;'

$res_3 = htmlentities($str);
$res_3 = str_replace("'","&#039;",$res_3);
echo var_dump($res_3); // string '&#039;H&egrave;&egrave;&egrave;llooo&#039;' --> Nice
?>

Hope it will helps you.

Regards,
W.D.

gunter [dot] sammet [at] gmail [dot] com

7 years ago


Had a heck of a time to get my rss entities right. using htmlentities didn't work and using html_entity_decode didn't work either. Ended up writing a custom function to encode and decode. It might still need some work but I thought to share it because I couldn't find anything on the net. Always open for suggestions to improve it! Here it is:



<?php

  $entity_custom_from = false;

  $entity_custom_to = false;

  function html_entity_decode_encode_rss($data) {

    global $entity_custom_from, $entity_custom_to;

    if(!is_array($entity_custom_from) || !is_array($entity_custom_to)){

      $array_position = 0;

      foreach (get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES) as $key => $value) {

        //print("<br />key: $key, value: $value <br />\n");

        switch ($value) {

          // These ones we can skip

          case '&nbsp;':

            break;

          case '&gt;':

          case '&lt;':

          case '&quot;':

          case '&apos;':

          case '&amp;':

            $entity_custom_from[$array_position] = $key;

            $entity_custom_to[$array_position] = $value;

            $array_position++;

            break;

          default:

            $entity_custom_from[$array_position] = $value;

            $entity_custom_to[$array_position] = $key;

            $array_position++;

        }

      }

    }

    return str_replace($entity_custom_from, $entity_custom_to, $data);

  }

?>

za at byza dot it

8 years ago


Trouble when using files with different charset?



htmlentities and html_entity_decode can be used to translate between charset! 



Sample function:



<?php

function utf2latin($text) {

   $text=htmlentities($text,ENT_COMPAT,'UTF-8');

   return html_entity_decode($text,ENT_COMPAT,'ISO-8859-1');

}

?>

h_guillaume at hotmail dot com

5 years ago


I use this function to encode all the xml entities and also all the &something; that are not defined in xml like &trade;
You can also decode what you encode with my decode function.
My function works a little like the htmlentities.
You can also add other string to the array if you want to exclude them from the encoding.

<?php
function xml_entity_decode($text, $charset = 'Windows-1252'){
    // Double decode, so if the value was &amp;trade; it will become Trademark
    $text = html_entity_decode($text, ENT_COMPAT, $charset);
    $text = html_entity_decode($text, ENT_COMPAT, $charset);
    return $text;
}

function xml_entities($text, $charset = 'Windows-1252'){
     // Debug and Test
    // $text = "test &amp; &trade; &amp;trade; abc &reg; &amp;reg; &#45;";
    
    // First we encode html characters that are also invalid in xml
    $text = htmlentities($text, ENT_COMPAT, $charset, false);
    
    // XML character entity array from Wiki
    // Note: &apos; is useless in UTF-8 or in UTF-16
    $arr_xml_special_char = array("&quot;","&amp;","&apos;","&lt;","&gt;");
    
    // Building the regex string to exclude all strings with xml special char
    $arr_xml_special_char_regex = "(?";
    foreach($arr_xml_special_char as $key => $value){
        $arr_xml_special_char_regex .= "(?!$value)";
    }
    $arr_xml_special_char_regex .= ")";
    
    // Scan the array for &something_not_xml; syntax
    $pattern = "/$arr_xml_special_char_regex&([a-zA-Z0-9]+;)/";
    
    // Replace the &something_not_xml; with &amp;something_not_xml;
    $replacement = '&amp;${1}';
    return preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $text);
}
?>

edo at edwaa dot com

10 years ago


A version of the xml entities function below. This one replaces the "prime" character (′) with which I had difficulties.



<?php

// XML Entity Mandatory Escape Characters

function xmlentities($string) {

   return str_replace ( array ( '&', '"', "'", '<', '>', '�' ), array ( '&amp;' , '&quot;', '&apos;' , '&lt;' , '&gt;', '&apos;' ), $string );

}

?>

jake_mcmahon at hotmail dot com

12 years ago


This fuction is particularly useful against XSS (cross-site-scripting-). XSS makes use of holes in code, whether it be in Javascript or PHP. XSS often, if not always, uses HTML entities to do its evil deeds, so this function in co-operation with your scripts (particularly search or submitting scripts) is a very useful tool in combatting "H4X0rz".

Wired

5 years ago


I needed a simple little function to take a string and convert extended ascii characters into html entities. I couldn't find a function for this so I whipped one up.

<?php
/* Convert Extended ASCII Characters to HTML Entities */
function ascii2entities($string){
    for($i=128;$i<=255;$i++){
        $entity = htmlentities(chr($i), ENT_QUOTES, 'cp1252');
        $temp = substr($entity, 0, 1);
        $temp .= substr($entity, -1, 1);
        if ($temp != '&;'){
            $string = str_replace(chr($i), '', $string);
        }
        else{
            $string = str_replace(chr($i), $entity, $string);
        }
    }
    return $string;
}

echo ascii2entities("•");
?>

Tom Walter

7 years ago


Note that as of 5.2.5 it appears that if the input string contains a character that is not valid for the output encoding you've specified, then this function returns null.

You might expect it to just strip the invalid char, but it doesn't.

You can strip the chars yourself like so:

iconv('utf-8','utf-8',$str);

You can combine that with htmlentities also:

$str = htmlentities(iconv('UTF-8', 'UTF-8//IGNORE', $str, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');

Should give you a string with htmlentities encoded to utf-8, and any unsupported chars stripped.

snevi at im dot com dot ve

7 years ago


correction to my previous post and improvement of the function: (the post was changed by the html parser and the characters displays as they should not)



<?php

    function XMLEntities($string)

    {

        $string = preg_replace('/[^\x09\x0A\x0D\x20-\x7F]/e', '_privateXMLEntities("$0")', $string);

        return $string;

    }



    function _privateXMLEntities($num)

    {

    $chars = array(

        128 => '&#8364;',

        130 => '&#8218;',

        131 => '&#402;',

        132 => '&#8222;',

        133 => '&#8230;',

        134 => '&#8224;',

        135 => '&#8225;',

        136 => '&#710;',

        137 => '&#8240;',

        138 => '&#352;',

        139 => '&#8249;',

        140 => '&#338;',

        142 => '&#381;',

        145 => '&#8216;',

        146 => '&#8217;',

        147 => '&#8220;',

        148 => '&#8221;',

        149 => '&#8226;',

        150 => '&#8211;',

        151 => '&#8212;',

        152 => '&#732;',

        153 => '&#8482;',

        154 => '&#353;',

        155 => '&#8250;',

        156 => '&#339;',

        158 => '&#382;',

        159 => '&#376;');

        $num = ord($num);

        return (($num > 127 && $num < 160) ? $chars[$num] : "&#".$num.";" );

    } 

?>



in the previous post, to correct the HEX values that are not rendered, the program use a for each cicle, but that introduces a mayor complexity in execution time, so, we use the ability to call functions in the preg_replace second parameter, and ceate another funcion that evaluates the ord of the character given, and if it is between 127 and 160 it returns the modified HEX value to be understood by the browser and not brake the XML

(this work with dynamic XML generated form php with dynamic data from any source)



p.d: the '&'(&) should appear in this post as a single ampersand character and not as the html entity

D. Gasser

9 years ago


When using UTF-8 as charset, you'll have to set UTF-8 in braces, otherwise the varaible is not recognized.

daviscabral[arroba]gmail[ponto]com

9 years ago


unhtmlentities for all entities:

<?php

function unhtmlentities ($string) {
   $trans_tbl1 = get_html_translation_table (HTML_ENTITIES);
   foreach ( $trans_tbl1 as $ascii => $htmlentitie ) {
        $trans_tbl2[$ascii] = '&#'.ord($ascii).';';
   }
   $trans_tbl1 = array_flip ($trans_tbl1);
   $trans_tbl2 = array_flip ($trans_tbl2);
   return strtr (strtr ($string, $trans_tbl1), $trans_tbl2);
}

?>

info at bleed dot ws

10 years ago


here the centralized version of htmlentities() for multibyte.

<?php
function mb_htmlentities($string)
{
    $string = htmlentities($string, ENT_COMPAT, mb_internal_encoding());
    return $string;
} 

?>

mzvarik at gmail dot com

6 years ago


CZECH entities:



<?php

$ent = array(

    'ě' => '&#283;',

    'Ě' => '&#282;',

    'š' => '&#353;',

    'Š' => '&#352;',

    'č' => '&#269;',

    'Č' => '&#268;',

    'ř' => '&#345;',

    'Ř' => '&#344;',

    'ž' => '&#382;',

    'Ž' => '&#381;',

    'ý' => '&#253;',

    'Ý' => '&#221;',

    'á' => '&#225;',

    'Á' => '&#193;',

    'í' => '&#237;',

    'Í' => '&#205;',

    'é' => '&#233;',

    'É' => '&#201;',

    'ú' => '&#250;',

    'ů' => '&#367;',

    'Ů' => '&#366;',

    'ď' => '&#271;',

    'Ď' => '&#270;',

    'ť' => '&#357;',

    'Ť' => '&#356;',

    'ň' => '&#328;',

    'Ň' => '&#327;'

);



echo strtr('ěščřžýáíéúůďťňĚŠČŘŽÝÁÍÉÚŮĎŤŇ', $ent);

?>

php dot net at softmoon-webware dot com

5 years ago


<?php 
$HTML_ENTS=array("quot", "amp", "apos", "lt", "gt", "nbsp", "iexcl", "cent",
"pound","curren", "yen", "brvbar", "sect", "uml", "copy", "ordf", "laquo",
"not", "shy", "reg", "macr", "deg", "plusmn", "sup2", "sup3", "acute",
"micro", "para", "middot", "cedil", "sup1", "ordm", "raquo", "frac14",
"frac12", "frac34", "iquest", "Agrave", "Aacute", "Acirc", "Atilde", "Auml",
"Aring", "AElig", "Ccedil", "Egrave", "Eacute", "Ecirc", "Euml", "Igrave",
"Iacute", "Icirc", "Iuml", "ETH", "Ntilde", "Ograve", "Oacute", "Ocirc",
"Otilde", "Ouml", "times", "Oslash", "Ugrave", "Uacute", "Ucirc", "Uuml",
"Yacute", "THORN", "szlig", "agrave", "aacute", "acirc", "atilde", "auml",
"aring", "aelig", "ccedil", "egrave", "eacute", "ecirc", "euml", "igrave",
"iacute", "icirc", "iuml", "eth", "ntilde", "ograve", "oacute", "ocirc",
"otilde", "ouml", "divide", "oslash", "ugrave", "uacute", "ucirc", "uuml",
"yacute", "thorn", "yuml", "OElig", "oelig", "Scaron", "scaron", "Yuml",
"fnof", "circ", "tilde", "Alpha", "Beta", "Gamma", "Delta", "Epsilon",
"Zeta", "Eta", "Theta", "Iota", "Kappa", "Lambda", "Mu", "Nu", "Xi",
"Omicron", "Pi", "Rho", "Sigma", "Tau", "Upsilon", "Phi", "Chi", "Psi",
"Omega", "alpha", "beta", "gamma", "delta", "epsilon", "zeta", "eta",
"theta", "iota", "kappa", "lambda", "mu", "nu", "xi", "omicron", "pi",
"rho", "sigmaf", "sigma", "tau", "upsilon", "phi", "chi", "psi", "omega",
"thetasym", "upsih", "piv", "ensp", "emsp", "thinsp", "zwnj", "zwj", "lrm",
"rlm", "ndash", "mdash", "lsquo", "rsquo", "sbquo", "ldquo", "rdquo",
"bdquo", "dagger", "Dagger", "bull", "hellip", "permil", "prime", "Prime",
"lsaquo", "rsaquo", "oline", "frasl", "euro", "image", "weierp", "real",
"trade", "alefsym", "larr", "uarr", "rarr", "darr", "harr", "crarr", "lArr",
"uArr", "rArr", "dArr", "hArr", "forall", "part", "exist", "empty", "nabla",
"isin", "notin", "ni", "prod", "sum", "minus", "lowast", "radic", "prop",
"infin", "ang", "and", "or", "cap", "cup", "int", "there4", "sim", "cong",
"asymp", "ne", "equiv", "le", "ge", "sub", "sup", "nsub", "sube", "supe",
"oplus", "otimes", "perp", "sdot", "lceil", "rceil", "lfloor",
"rfloor", "lang", "rang", "loz", "spades", "clubs", "hearts", "diams");

// The selection of tags below is optimized for use with a webmaster's database,
// --NOT-- to process user POSTs from the World Wide Web
//  for inclusion on a public page.

//  NOT included:
//   form,  input,  select,  option,  label,  optgroup,  textarea,  area,  map,
//   html,  head,  style,  link,  meta,  base,  body,  isindex,
//   frame,  frameset,  noframes
//  (include those above at your wish,  remove those below at your wish)
$HTML_TAGS=array("a", "abbr", "acronym", "address", "applet", "b", "basefont",
"bdo", "big", "blockquote", "br", "button", "caption", "center", "cite",
"code", "col", "colgroup", "dd", "del", "dfn", "dir", "div", "dl", "dt", "em",
"embed", "fieldset", "font", "h1", "h2", "h3", "h4", "h5", "h6", "hr", "i",
"iframe", "img", "ins", "kbd", "legend", "li", "menu", "noembed", "noscript",
"object", "ol", "p", "param", "pre", "q", "s", "samp", "script", "small",
"span", "strike", "strong", "sub", "sup", "table", "tbody", "td", "tfoot",
"th", "thead", "title", "tr", "tt", "u", "ul", "var");

$Xchars = array(
 128 => '&#8364;',
 130 => '&#8218;',
 131 => '&#402;',
 132 => '&#8222;',
 133 => '&#8230;',
 134 => '&#8224;',
 135 => '&#8225;',
 136 => '&#710;',
 137 => '&#8240;',
 138 => '&#352;',
 139 => '&#8249;',
 140 => '&#338;',
 142 => '&#381;',
 145 => '&#8216;',
 146 => '&#8217;',
 147 => '&#8220;',
 148 => '&#8221;',
 149 => '&#8226;',
 150 => '&#8211;',
 151 => '&#8212;',
 152 => '&#732;',
 153 => '&#8482;',
 154 => '&#353;',
 155 => '&#8250;',
 156 => '&#339;',
 158 => '&#382;',
 159 => '&#376;');
?>

Kenneth Kin Lum

7 years ago


use htmlspecialchars() if you are passing in a usual ASCII string.  It is faster than htmlentities().

For example, if you are just doing 

htmlentities('<div style="background: #fff"></div>');

then you can just use htmlspecialchars().  htmlentities() will look for all possible ways to convert string into html entities, such as &copy; or &eacute; (which is e with an acute accent on top).

Note that ASCII is just 7 bit, which is 0x00 to 0x7F.  htmlspecialchars() will handle characters inside this range already.  htmlentities() is for the 8-bit Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1) to handle European characters, or for UTF-8 when the 3rd argument is "UTF-8" to handle UTF-8 characters, or other types of encodings using different values for the 3rd argument passed into htmlentities().

marktpitman at gmail dot com

8 years ago


I just thought I would add that if you're using the default charset, htmlentities will not correctly return the trademark ( ™ ) sign.



Instead it will return something like this: â�¢



If you need the trademark symbol, use:



<?php htmlentities( $html, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8" ); ?>

montana

6 years ago


under what circumstances would someone want a ntilde [ñ] to be converted into "Ã±" as htmlentities does?
the correct method of translation should return the accurate NCR for the multibyte unicode sequence 
which in this case is &#241;

<?php

    //simple task: convert everything from utf-8 into an NCR[numeric character reference]
    class unicode_replace_entities {
        public function UTF8entities($content="") { 
            $contents = $this->unicode_string_to_array($content);
            $swap = "";
            $iCount = count($contents);
            for ($o=0;$o<$iCount;$o++) {
                $contents[$o] = $this->unicode_entity_replace($contents[$o]);
                $swap .= $contents[$o];
            }
            return mb_convert_encoding($swap,"UTF-8"); //not really necessary, but why not.
        }

        public function unicode_string_to_array( $string ) { //adjwilli
            $strlen = mb_strlen($string);
            while ($strlen) {
                $array[] = mb_substr( $string, 0, 1, "UTF-8" );
                $string = mb_substr( $string, 1, $strlen, "UTF-8" );
                $strlen = mb_strlen( $string );
            }
            return $array;
        }

        public function unicode_entity_replace($c) { //m. perez 
            $h = ord($c{0});    
            if ($h <= 0x7F) { 
                return $c;
            } else if ($h < 0xC2) { 
                return $c;
            }
            
            if ($h <= 0xDF) {
                $h = ($h & 0x1F) << 6 | (ord($c{1}) & 0x3F);
                $h = "&#" . $h . ";";
                return $h; 
            } else if ($h <= 0xEF) {
                $h = ($h & 0x0F) << 12 | (ord($c{1}) & 0x3F) << 6 | (ord($c{2}) & 0x3F);
                $h = "&#" . $h . ";";
                return $h;
            } else if ($h <= 0xF4) {
                $h = ($h & 0x0F) << 18 | (ord($c{1}) & 0x3F) << 12 | (ord($c{2}) & 0x3F) << 6 | (ord($c{3}) & 0x3F);
                $h = "&#" . $h . ";";
                return $h;
            }
        }
    }//
    
    //utf-8 environment    
    $content = "<strong>baño baño baño</strong>日本語 = nihongo da ze.<br />";

    $oUnicodeReplace = new unicode_replace_entities();
    $content = $oUnicodeReplace->UTF8entities($content);
    echo "<br />Result:<br />";
    echo $content;
    $source = htmlentities($content);
    echo "<br />htmlentities of resulting data:<br />";
    echo $source;

    echo "<br /><br />Note: Entities get replaced with 'literals' in textarea FF3<br /><br />";
    echo "<textarea style='width:300px;height:150px;'>";
    echo $content;
    echo "</textarea>";
    
    echo "<br /><br />For editing NCR's rather than 'literals' in a textarea<br /><br />";
    echo "<textarea style='width:300px;height:150px;'>";
    echo preg_replace("/(&#)+/","&amp;#",$content);  
    echo "</textarea>";

?>

galert420 at gmail dot com

5 years ago


Croatian entites



<?php

$ent = array(

    'Ć'=>'&#262;',

    'ć'=>'&#263;',

    'Č'=>'&#268;',

    'č'=>'&#269;',

    'Đ'=>'&#272',

    'đ'=>'&#273',

    'Š'=>'&#352',

    'š'=>'&#353',

    'Ž'=>'&#381',

    'ž'=>'&#382'

);



echo strtr('ĆćČčĐđŠšŽž', $ent);

?>

sirarthur at sirarthur dot info

6 years ago


When happens that you want to encode special characters but not the HTML tags using this function you've two options:

a) Build your own function and go replace by character; eg.

<?php
  for($i = 0; $i < strlen($string); $i++){
     switch(substr($string,$i,1)){
        //..... A VERY HUGE switch here with all characters to encode.
    }
 }
?>

b) use this function and simple restore the html tags afterwards. Which gives you a 6 line function as follow:

<?php
  function keephtml($string){
          $res = htmlentities($string);
          $res = str_replace("&lt;","<",$res);
          $res = str_replace("&gt;",">",$res);
          $res = str_replace("&quot;",'"',$res);
          $res = str_replace("&amp;",'&',$res);
          return $res;
}
?>

brianhamner at yahoo dot com

6 years ago


If you want something simple that actually works, try this. Strips MS word and other entities and returns a clear data string:



<?php

//call this function



function DoHTMLEntities ($string) {

    $trans_tbl[chr(145)] = '&#8216;';

    $trans_tbl[chr(146)] = '&#8217;';

    $trans_tbl[chr(147)] = '&#8220;';

    $trans_tbl[chr(148)] = '&#8221;';

    $trans_tbl[chr(142)] = '&eacute;';

    $trans_tbl[chr(150)] = '&#8211;';

    $trans_tbl[chr(151)] = '&#8212;';

    return strtr ($string, $trans_tbl);

}



//insert your string variable here



        $foo = str_replace("\r\n\r\n","",htmlentities($your_string));

        $foo2 = str_replace("\r\n"," ",$foo);

        $foo3 = str_replace(" & ","&amp;",$foo2);

        echo DoHTMLEntities ($foo3);

?>

drallen at cs dot uwaterloo dot ca

5 years ago


A pointer to http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mb-convert-encoding.php if your intention is to translate *all* characters in a charset to their corresponding HTML entities, not just named characters. Non-named characters will be replaced with HTML numeric encoding. eg:

$text = mb_convert_encoding($text, 'HTML-ENTITIES', "UTF-8");

info at pirandot dot de

9 years ago


The data returned by a text input field is ready to be used in a data base query when enclosed in single quotes, e.g.

<?php

   mysql_query ("SELECT * FROM Article WHERE id = '$data'");

?>

But you will get problems when writing back this data into the input field's value,

<?php

   echo "<input name='data' type='text' value='$data'>";

?>

because hmtl codes would be interpreted and escape sequences would cause strange output.



The following function may help:

<?php

function deescape ($s, $charset='UTF-8')

{

   //  don't interpret html codes and don't convert quotes

   $s  =  htmlentities ($s, ENT_NOQUOTES, $charset);



   //  delete the inserted backslashes except those for protecting single quotes

   $s  =  preg_replace ("/\\\\([^'])/e", '"&#" . ord("$1") . ";"', $s);



   //  delete the backslashes inserted for protecting single quotes

   $s  =  str_replace ("\\'", "&#" . ord ("'") . ";", $s);



   return  $s;

}

?>

Try some input like:  a'b"c\d\'e\"f\\g&x#27;h  to test ...

wwb at 3dwargamer dot net

12 years ago


htmlentites is a very handy function, but it fails to fix one thing which I deal with alot: word 'smart' quotes and emdashes.



The below function replaces the funky double quotes with &quot;, funky single quotes with standard single quotes and fixes emdashes.



<?php

    function CleanupSmartQuotes($text)

    {

        $badwordchars=array(

                            chr(145),

                            chr(146),

                            chr(147),

                            chr(148),

                            chr(151)

                            );

        $fixedwordchars=array(

                            "'",

                            "'",

                            '&quot;',

                            '&quot;',

                            '&mdash;'

                            );

        return str_replace($badwordchars,$fixedwordchars,$text);

    }

?>

Bassie (:

13 years ago


Note that you'll have use htmlentities() before any other function who'll edit text like nl2br().

If you use nl2br() first, the htmlentities() function will change < br > to &lt;br&gt;.

kindrosker at gmail dot com

5 years ago


All Codes list

array('À'=>'&Agrave;', 'à'=>'&agrave;', 'Á'=>'&Aacute;', 'á'=>'&aacute;', 'Â'=>'&Acirc;', 'â'=>'&acirc;', 'Ã'=>'&Atilde;', 'ã'=>'&atilde;', 'Ä'=>'&Auml;', 'ä'=>'&auml;', 'Å'=>'&Aring;', 'å'=>'&aring;', 'Æ'=>'&AElig;', 'æ'=>'&aelig;', 'Ç'=>'&Ccedil;', 'ç'=>'&ccedil;', 'Ð'=>'&ETH;', 'ð'=>'&eth;', 'È'=>'&Egrave;', 'è'=>'&egrave;', 'É'=>'&Eacute;', 'é'=>'&eacute;', 'Ê'=>'&Ecirc;', 'ê'=>'&ecirc;', 'Ë'=>'&Euml;', 'ë'=>'&euml;', 'Ì'=>'&Igrave;', 'ì'=>'&igrave;', 'Í'=>'&Iacute;', 'í'=>'&iacute;', 'Î'=>'&Icirc;', 'î'=>'&icirc;', 'Ï'=>'&Iuml;', 'ï'=>'&iuml;', 'Ñ'=>'&Ntilde;', 'ñ'=>'&ntilde;', 'Ò'=>'&Ograve;', 'ò'=>'&ograve;', 'Ó'=>'&Oacute;', 'ó'=>'&oacute;', 'Ô'=>'&Ocirc;', 'ô'=>'&ocirc;', 'Õ'=>'&Otilde;', 'õ'=>'&otilde;', 'Ö'=>'&Ouml;', 'ö'=>'&ouml;', 'Ø'=>'&Oslash;', 'ø'=>'&oslash;', 'Œ'=>'&OElig;', 'œ'=>'&oelig;', 'ß'=>'&szlig;', 'Þ'=>'&THORN;', 'þ'=>'&thorn;', 'Ù'=>'&Ugrave;', 'ù'=>'&ugrave;', 'Ú'=>'&Uacute;', 'ú'=>'&uacute;', 'Û'=>'&Ucirc;', 'û'=>'&ucirc;', 'Ü'=>'&Uuml;', 'ü'=>'&uuml;', 'Ý'=>'&Yacute;', 'ý'=>'&yacute;', 'Ÿ'=>'&Yuml;', 'ÿ'=>'&yuml;');

anonymous

10 years ago


This function will encode anything that is non Standard ASCII (that is, that is above #127 in the ascii table)



<?php

// allhtmlentities : mainly based on "chars_encode()"  by Tim Burgan <timburgan@gmail.com> [http://www.php.net/htmlentities]

function allhtmlentities($string) {

    if ( strlen($string) == 0 ) 

        return $string;

    $result = '';

    $string = htmlentities($string, HTML_ENTITIES);

    $string = preg_split("//", $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);

    $ord = 0;

    for ( $i = 0; $i < count($string); $i++ ) {

        $ord = ord($string[$i]);

        if ( $ord > 127 ) {

            $string[$i] = '&#' . $ord . ';';

        }

    }

    return implode('',$string);

}

?>

htmlentities

Description

Parameters

Return Values

Changelog

Examples

See Also

User Contributed Notes