PHP : htmlspecialchars() function

Last update on October 03 2024 12:05:40 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

PHP: Convert special characters to HTML entities

The htmlspecialchars() function is used to converts special characters ( e.g. & (ampersand), " (double quote), ' (single quote), < (less than), > (greater than)) to HTML entities ( i.e. & (ampersand) becomes &amp, ' (single quote) becomes &#039, < (less than) becomes < (greater than) becomes > ).

Version:

(PHP 4 and above)

Syntax:

htmlspecialchars(input_string,quote_style,character_set)

Parameter:

Name	Description	Required / Optional	Type
input_string	The string to be converted.	Required	String
quote_style	Encoding single and double quote. ENT_COMPAT : Convert double quotes and leave single quotes unchanged. ENT_COMPAT is the default setting ENT_QUOTES : Converts both single and double quotes. ENT_NOQUOTES: Converts neither single nor double quotes.	Optional	Integer
charset	Refers the character set to be used. List of character set. ISO-8859-1 : Western European, Latin-1 [default character set]. ISO-8859-15 : Western European, Latin-9. UTF-8 : ASCII compatible multi-byte 8-bit Unicode. cp866 : DOS-specific Cyrillic charset. cp1251 : Windows-specific Cyrillic charset. cp1252 : Windows-specific charset for Western European. KOI8-R : Russian. BIG5 : Traditional Chinese. GB2312 : Simplified Chinese. BIG5-HKSCS : Big5 with Hong Kong extensions. Shift_JIS : Japanese. EUC-JP : Japanese.	Optional	String

Return value:

The converted string.

Value Type: String.

Example:

<?php
$convert = "<li><a href='index.php'>We are learning php</a></li>";
echo "Original string : ".$convert;
echo "<br />";
htmlspecialchars("<li><a href='index.php'>We are learning php</a></li>", ENT_QUOTES);
echo "Only HTML special characters : ".htmlspecialchars($convert);
?>

Output:

Original string: 

We are learning php

Only HTML special characters :
 <li><a href='index.php'>We are learning php</a></li>

View the example in the browser

See also

PHP Function Reference

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