htmlentities

Description

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. The get_html_translation_table() function can be used to return the translation table used dependent upon the provided flags constants.

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_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE | ENT_HTML401.

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

Encoding Charsets

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

Examples

A htmlentities() example

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

echo htmlentities($str);
echo "\n\n";
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_COMPAT);
?>

The above example will output:

A 'quote' is <b>bold</b>

A 'quote' is <b>bold</b>

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");
?>

See Also

• html_entity_decode()
• get_html_translation_table()
• htmlspecialchars()
• nl2br()
• urlencode()