Скачать или смотреть How to Properly Remove HTML Entities in PHP

Learn how to effectively manage multiple levels of `HTML entity` encoding in PHP and clean your strings properly.
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This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/66043175/ asked by the user 'Niklas' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/8466832/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/66043259/ provided by the user 'Barmar' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/1491895/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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Understanding HTML Entities in PHP: A Guide to Cleaning Your Strings

Good morning, dear readers! Today, we are going to tackle a common issue that many PHP developers face: removing HTML entities from strings. Whether you're working on a web application or processing user input, understanding how to handle HTML entities is crucial for data cleanliness and security.

The Problem: Double Encoding of HTML Entities

Consider a situation where you have a string with HTML entities that you want to "clean" in PHP. For example, a string might look like this:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

You might try using the following code to decode and strip the HTML tags:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

However, when you run this code, you get the output:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

As you can see, the output still contains the HTML entities, which is not the desired result. You may wonder, why doesn't this work? The answer lies in double encoding. The < and > were encoded into < and >, which means you need to decode them twice before stripping tags.

The Solution: Decode Twice

To solve this issue, you can implement the following code snippet, which decodes the entities twice before stripping any tags. Here’s how you can do it:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Breaking Down the Solution

First Decoding: The first call to html_entity_decode() converts < to < and > to >.

Second Decoding: The second call processes the result further, turning < back into < and > into >.

Strip Tags: Once cleaned from the HTML entity formats, strip_tags() removes any remaining HTML tags, giving you a clean string.

Example Output

Running the above code will now yield the expected result:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

This means you've successfully removed all HTML entities and tags from the original string!

Conclusion

Handling HTML entities correctly can be challenging, especially when dealing with strings that have been encoded multiple times. By carefully decoding your entities twice, you can ensure that you clean your strings effectively.

Next time you're faced with a similar issue, remember this approach to decode your strings thoroughly and achieve the desired results. Happy coding!