PHP htmlentities() Function
Example
Convert 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 Usage
The 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:
Invalid encoding:
Additional flags for specifying the used doctype:
|
| character-set | Optional. A string that specifies which character-set to use. Allowed values are:
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.
|
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 Examples
Example
Convert 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 »
Example
Convert 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