convert HTMLspecial chars back?!

mfacer

hey,
I've used htmlspecialchars ENT_QUOTES when importing to a DB.... they display ok in HTML, but when I output again or use in javascript, I need to convert them back to the original character... eg:

"&" should be "&" etc...

is there a PHP function to convert them back to chars? I cant find one anywhere!!!!
thanks

devinemke

don't store the HTML special chars in the database. store them as the original chars and use [man]htmlspecialchars[/man] only for display.

if you must store the HTML special chars here's a quick way to convert back:

$string = 'this string has &amp; in it';
$trans = get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES);
$trans = array_flip($trans);
echo strtr($string, $trans);

laserlight

Look to use [man]get_html_translation_table/man with [man]strtr/man and [man]array_flip/man.

Though it might be simpler to [man]str_replace/man the ampersand character entity references, I'm not too sure.

rheroux

I think html_entity_decode is what you're looking for.

mfacer

Originally posted by rheroux
I think html_entity_decode is what you're looking for.

spot on! thanks 🙂

thanks to everyone else for their answers as well - I needed to store the values in the DB like this as I was importing and exporting and quotation marks etc were messing it up!!

🙂