❮ PHP String Reference ExampleConvert some characters to HTML entities: <?php
$str = '<a href="https://www.w3schools.com">Go to w3schools.com</a>';
echo htmlentities($str);
?> The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source): <a href="https://www.w3schools.com">Go to
w3schools.com</a> The browser output of the code above will be: <a href="https://www.w3schools.com">Go to w3schools.com</a> Try it Yourself »
Definition and UsageThe htmlentities() function converts characters to HTML entities. Tip: To convert HTML entities back to characters, use the
html_entity_decode() function. Tip: Use the get_html_translation_table() function to return the translation table used by htmlentities().
Syntax htmlentities(string,flags,character-set,double_encode) Parameter Values
| Parameter | Description |
|---|
| string
| Required. Specifies the string to convert
| | flags
| Optional. Specifies how to handle quotes, invalid encoding and the used document type. The available quote styles are: - ENT_COMPAT - Default. Encodes only double quotes
- ENT_QUOTES - Encodes double and single quotes
- ENT_NOQUOTES - Does not encode any quotes
Invalid encoding: - ENT_IGNORE - Ignores invalid encoding instead of having the function return an empty string. Should be avoided, as it may have security implications.
- ENT_SUBSTITUTE
- Replaces invalid encoding for a specified character set with a Unicode Replacement Character U+FFFD (UTF-8) or &#FFFD; instead of returning an empty string.
- ENT_DISALLOWED - Replaces code points that are invalid in the specified doctype with a Unicode Replacement Character U+FFFD (UTF-8) or &#FFFD;
Additional flags for specifying the used doctype: - ENT_HTML401 - Default. Handle code as HTML 4.01
- ENT_HTML5 - Handle code as HTML 5
- ENT_XML1 -
Handle code as XML 1
- ENT_XHTML - Handle code as XHTML
| | character-set
| Optional. A string that specifies which character-set to use. Allowed values are: - UTF-8 - Default. ASCII compatible multi-byte 8-bit Unicode
- ISO-8859-1 - Western European
- ISO-8859-15 - Western European (adds the Euro sign + French and Finnish letters missing in ISO-8859-1)
- cp866 - DOS-specific Cyrillic charset
- cp1251 - Windows-specific Cyrillic charset
- cp1252 - Windows specific charset for Western European
- KOI8-R - Russian
- BIG5 - Traditional Chinese, mainly used in Taiwan
- GB2312 - Simplified Chinese, national standard character set
- BIG5-HKSCS - Big5 with Hong Kong extensions
- Shift_JIS - Japanese
- EUC-JP - Japanese
- MacRoman - Character-set that was used by Mac OS
Note: Unrecognized character-sets will be ignored and replaced by ISO-8859-1 in versions prior to PHP 5.4. As of PHP 5.4, it will be ignored an replaced by UTF-8.
| | double_encode
| Optional. A boolean value that specifies whether to encode existing html entities or not. - TRUE - Default. Will convert everything
- FALSE - Will not encode existing html entities
|
Technical Details
| Return Value: | Returns the converted string. However, if the string parameter contains invalid encoding, it will return an empty string, unless either the ENT_IGNORE or ENT_SUBSTITUTE flags are set
|
|---|
| PHP Version: | 4+
|
|---|
| Changelog: | PHP 5.6 - Changed the default value for the character-set parameter to the value of the default charset (in configuration).
PHP 5.4 - Changed the default value for the character-set parameter to UTF-8.
PHP 5.4 - Added ENT_SUBSTITUTE, ENT_DISALLOWED, ENT_HTML401, ENT_HTML5, ENT_XML1 and ENT_XHTML
PHP 5.3 - Added ENT_IGNORE constant.
PHP 5.2.3 - Added the double_encode parameter.
PHP 4.1 - Added the
character-set
parameter.
|
|---|
More ExamplesExampleConvert some characters to HTML entities: <?php
$str = "Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'";
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_COMPAT); // Will only convert double quotes
echo "<br>";
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_QUOTES); // Converts double and single quotes
echo "<br>";
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_NOQUOTES); // Does not convert any quotes
?> The HTML output of the code above will
be (View Source): Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'<br>
Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'<br>
Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²' The browser output of the code above will be: Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'
Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'
Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²' Try it Yourself »
ExampleConvert some characters to HTML entities using the Western European character-set: <?php
$str = "My name is Øyvind Åsane. I'm Norwegian.";
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8"); // Will only convert double quotes (not single quotes), and uses the character-set Western European
?> The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source): <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
My name is Øyvind Åsane.
I'm Norwegian.
</body>
</html> The browser output of the code above will be: My name is Øyvind Åsane. I'm Norwegian. Try it Yourself »
❮ PHP String Reference
What is HTML encoding in PHP?
Encoding for HTML means converting reserved characters into HTML character entities. HTML character entities are written as &code; , where "code" is an abbreviation or a number to represent each character.
What is the use of HTML entities () function in PHP?
htmlentities() Function: The htmlentities() function is an inbuilt function in PHP that is used to transform all characters which are applicable to HTML entities. This function converts all characters that are applicable to HTML entities.
Does PHP convert to HTML?
To convert your PHP files to HTML files, simply select the option from this list that says, "HTML." All conversions performed will now be to the HTML document file format.
What is HTML entities ()?
An HTML entity is a piece of text ("string") that begins with an ampersand ( & ) and ends with a semicolon ( ; ). Entities are frequently used to display reserved characters (which would otherwise be interpreted as HTML code), and invisible characters (like non-breaking spaces).
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