HTML Functions

[rcoursey]

I have read the PHP manual and am not clear on a couple of HTML functions:

htmlspecialchars():
I know the function converts special characters to HTML entities.

htmlentities():
This converts even more characters.

get_html_translation_table():
returns a translation table basd on above.

In the case of htmlspecialchars() & htmlentities() how do the "special characters" get translated to be stored in the DB(MySQL)in the first place? (What function is used?)

How is the translation table built initially?

This for some reason is conusing to me.

When would you use one over the others (consider all three)?

Thanks,
Richard

[superwormy]

First off, none of this has anything to do with a database, so forget about all database related things for the moment.

htmlspecialchars() takes certain symbols ( &, ", ', <, > ) and converts them to their respective HTML entities.

htmlentities() does the same thing except with more characters.

get_html_translation_table() does nothing useful for all practical purposes... all the data inside that function is a predefined hard-coded variable within PHP, you can't change it, and it gets set automatically when you call the function.

If you're trying to escape characters to put into MySQL, use mysql_escape_chars() instead.