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htmlspecialchars_decode

PHP function Edit on GitHub ✎

(PHP 5 >= 5.1.0, PHP 7, PHP 8)

Convert special HTML entities back to characters

Description

htmlspecialchars_decode(string $string, int $flags = ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE | ENT_HTML401): string

This function is the opposite of htmlspecialchars(). It converts special HTML entities back to characters.

The converted entities are: &, " (when ENT_NOQUOTES is not set), ' (when ENT_QUOTES is set), < and >.

Parameters

string

The string to decode.

flags

A bitmask of one or more of the following flags, which specify how to handle quotes and which document type to use. 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_SUBSTITUTE`	Replace invalid code unit sequences with a Unicode Replacement Character U+FFFD (UTF-8) or � (otherwise) instead of returning an empty string.
`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.

Return Values

Returns the decoded string.

Changelog

Version	Description
8.1.0	`flags` changed from `ENT_COMPAT` to `ENT_QUOTES` \| `ENT_SUBSTITUTE` \| `ENT_HTML401`.

Examples

A htmlspecialchars_decode() example

php

<?php
$str = "<p>this -&gt; &quot;</p>\n";

echo htmlspecialchars_decode($str);

// note that here the quotes aren't converted
echo htmlspecialchars_decode($str, ENT_NOQUOTES);
?>

The above example will output:

output

<p>this -> "</p>
<p>this -> &quot;</p>