I'm experiencing a strange problem with HTML entities in form input using PHP v. 4.0.4pl1.
My form consists of three fields:
A "select" pulldown menu to enable users to select an existing record;
A text field in which users enter a headline;
A textarea field in which users enter text.
The input from the form is saved in a MySQL database (v. 3.23.33). Everything was working fine until I started adding HTML entities (e.g., ™, •, etc.) to represent the trademark symbol, bullets, etc. in the textarea field. I'm able to add a record to the database with HTML entities. However, when I retrieve an existing record, make modifications in the textarea field, and submit the input, the "selected" value from the pulldown menu is somehow lost.
When I say "lost", I mean that the key for the pulldown input field is actually missing when I loop through HTTP_POST_VARS at the top of the script. If there are no HTML entities in the textarea field, the value for the pulldown menu shows up and everything works fine.
I can't figure out the source of the problem. The encoding type within the <form> tag is standard: enctype="multipart/form-data". I'm not altering the input from the pulldown input field before submittal.
Even odder, the same form works fine with HTML entities on older versions of PHP.
Any ideas what's going on?
