[RESOLVED] Special Characters

[eddjc]

Hi All,

I have another question - I have a lot of information in a mysql database which I want to display allowing HTML coding for basic formating. htmlspecialchars() and htmlentities() both make the HTML tags appear instead of formatting the text. Is there a function that will keep the taglines intact but replace pound symbols (£) etc. with the appropriate HTML equivalent?

Thanks

Edd

[laserlight]

Well, a simple workaround would be to use str_replace() to replace back the < and >

[NogDog]

This might be a bit of a kludge, but it seems to work:

$htmlText = htmlentities($htmlText, ENT_NOQUOTES);
$htmlText = str_replace(array('&lt;', '&gt;'), array('<', '>'), $htmlText);
$htmlText = preg_replace('/<(?=[^>]*(<|$))/', '&lt;', $htmlText);

[eddjc]

Hi there,

Thanks for the tip - it's not working though - I've put it in here:

if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0)
	{

// echo 'rows found';
	while($row=mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
	{
		// print_r($row);
		echo '<div class="newsitem"><div class="h2" align=left>' . date("d F Y", $row['date']) . ' - ' . $row['title'] . '</div>';

		$htmlText = $row[info];
		$htmlText = htmlentities($htmlText, ENT_NOQUOTES); 
		$htmlText = str_replace(array('&lt;', '&gt;'), array('<', '>'), $htmlText); 
		$htmlText = preg_replace('/<(?=[^>]*(<|$))/', '&lt;', $htmlText);

		echo $htmltext;

		if ($row[thumb] == 'NULL')
		{
		echo '<div class=imagethumb><img src="' . $row[thumb] . '"></div>';
		echo '<div class="imagetext"><div class="body">' . $htmltext . '</P></div></div></div>';
		}
		else
		{
		echo '<P class="body">' . $htmltext . '</P></div>';
		}
	}
}
else
{
	echo 'No Rows Found';
}

but now the $row[info] information isn't showing up atall - any ideas?

Cheers
Edd

[NogDog]

For a sanity check, I'd suggest doing a little debugging to make sure you are starting with a good value:

//
            $htmlText = $row[info];
            // DEBUG:
            echo "<pre>DEBUG:\n".htmlentities($htmlText)."</pre>\n";
            // END DEBUG

[eddjc]

Hi There,

Apologies for the late reply - that was a really great tip and helped enormously! problem solved - thanks!

Edd