Displaying HTML as code

[timbr8ks]

Working with PHP and MySQL, I'm putting HTML code into a text field and then need it to displayed on another page, showing the HTML code. For example, the text field might contain some instructions on how to create an href tag, so I type the full href HTML into the data entry form. When this information is displayed, it needs to display the full href tag.

Is there a way, either with PHP or with MySQL, to tell it to display the HTML -- other than using < and > .

I'm thinking this is a very obvious question, and I'm simply spacing on the answer.

[sfullman]

1. If you have html source code you would like to display as it is, and not interpreted by the browser, use:

echo $string = htmlentities($sourceCode)

which will take care of everything for you. If you want to display text in a textbox or input of a form, you should ALWAYS use this; otherwise, a "> will fool the browser into thinking the text area has finished.

2. Be aware that tabs and indents will still not show, so you can either do this:

$string = str_replace("\n", "<BR>", htmlentities($sourceCode));
$string = str_replace("\t", "&nbsp;&nbsp;", $string);

or--

echo "<pre>";
echo htmlentities($string);
echo "</pre>";

pre means preserve whitespace formatting...

Sam