HTML_ENTITY_DECODE(3) 1 HTML_ENTITY_DECODE(3)
html_entity_decode - Convert all HTML entities to their applicable characters
SYNOPSIS
string html_entity_decode (string $string, [int $flags = ENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401], [string $encoding = ini_get("default_charset")])
DESCRIPTION
html_entity_decode(3) is the opposite of htmlentities(3) in that it converts all HTML entities in the $string to their applicable charac-
ters.
More precisely, this function decodes all the entities (including all numeric entities) that a) are necessarily valid for the chosen docu-
ment type -- i.e., for XML, this function does not decode named entities that might be defined in some DTD -- and b) whose character or
characters are in the coded character set associated with the chosen encoding and are permitted in the chosen document type. All other
entities are left as is.
PARAMETERS
o $string
- The input string.
o $flags
- A bitmask of one or more of the following flags, which specify how to handle quotes and which document type to use. The default
is ENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401.
Available $flags constants
+--------------+---------------------------------------------------+
|Constant Name | |
| | |
| | Description |
| | |
+--------------+---------------------------------------------------+
| | |
| ENT_COMPAT | |
| | |
| | Will convert double-quotes and leave single- |
| | quotes alone. |
| | |
| | |
| ENT_QUOTES | |
| | |
| | Will convert both double and single quotes. |
| | |
| | |
|ENT_NOQUOTES | |
| | |
| | Will leave both double and single quotes uncon- |
| | verted. |
| | |
| | |
| ENT_HTML401 | |
| | |
| | Handle code as HTML 4.01. |
| | |
| | |
| ENT_XML1 | |
| | |
| | Handle code as XML 1. |
| | |
| | |
| ENT_XHTML | |
| | |
| | Handle code as XHTML. |
| | |
| | |
| ENT_HTML5 | |
| | |
| | Handle code as HTML 5. |
| | |
+--------------+---------------------------------------------------+
o $encoding
- An optional argument defining the encoding used when converting characters. If omitted, the default value of the $encoding
varies depending on the PHP version in use. In PHP 5.6 and later, the default_charset configuration option is used as the default
value. PHP 5.4 and 5.5 will use UTF-8 as the default. Earlier versions of PHP use ISO-8859-1. Although this argument is techni-
cally optional, you are highly encouraged to specify the correct value for your code if you are using PHP 5.5 or earlier, or if
your default_charset configuration option may be set incorrectly for the given input. The following character sets are supported:
Supported charsets
+------------+--------------------------------------+---+
| Charset | | |
| | | |
| | Aliases | |
| | | |
| | Description | |
| | | |
+------------+--------------------------------------+---+
|ISO-8859-1 | | |
| | | |
| | ISO8859-1 | |
| | | |
| | Western European, Latin-1. | |
| | | |
|ISO-8859-5 | | |
| | | |
| | ISO8859-5 | |
| | | |
| | Little used cyrillic charset | |
| | (Latin/Cyrillic). | |
| | | |
|ISO-8859-15 | | |
| | | |
| | ISO8859-15 | |
| | | |
| | Western European, Latin-9. Adds the | |
| | Euro sign, French and Finnish let- | |
| | ters missing in Latin-1 | |
| | (ISO-8859-1). | |
| | | |
| UTF-8 | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |T{ | |
| | ASCII compatible multi-byte 8-bit | |
| | Unicode. | |
| | | |
| cp866 | | |
| | | |
| | ibm866, 866 | |
| | | |
| | DOS-specific Cyrillic charset. | |
| | | |
| cp1251 | | |
| | | |
| | Windows-1251, win-1251, 1251 | |
| | | |
| | Windows-specific Cyrillic charset. | |
| | | |
| cp1252 | | |
| | | |
| | Windows-1252, 1252 | |
| | | |
| | Windows specific charset for West- | |
| | ern European. | |
| | | |
| KOI8-R | | |
| | | |
| | koi8-ru, koi8r | |
| | | |
| | Russian. | |
| | | |
| BIG5 | | |
| | | |
| | 950 | |
| | | |
| | Traditional Chinese, mainly used in | |
| | Taiwan. | |
| | | |
| GB2312 | | |
| | | |
| | 936 | |
| | | |
| | Simplified Chinese, national stan- | |
| | dard character set. | |
| | | |
|BIG5-HKSCS | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |T{ | |
| | Big5 with Hong Kong extensions, | |
| | Traditional Chinese. | |
| | | |
| Shift_JIS | | |
| | | |
| | SJIS, SJIS-win, cp932, 932 | |
| | | |
| | Japanese | |
| | | |
| EUC-JP | | |
| | | |
| | EUCJP, eucJP-win | |
| | | |
| | Japanese | |
| | | |
| MacRoman | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |T{ | |
| | Charset that was used by Mac OS. | |
| | | |
| | | |
| '' | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | |T{ | |
| | An empty string activates detection | |
| | from script encoding (Zend multi- | |
| | byte), default_charset and current | |
| | locale (see nl_langinfo(3) and set- | |
| | locale(3)), in this order. Not rec- | |
| | ommended. | |
| | | |
+------------+--------------------------------------+---+
Note
Any other character sets are not recognized. The default encoding will be used instead and a warning will be emitted.
RETURN VALUES
Returns the decoded string.
CHANGELOG
+--------+---------------------------------------------------+
|Version | |
| | |
| | Description |
| | |
+--------+---------------------------------------------------+
| 5.6.0 | |
| | |
| | The default value for the $encoding parameter |
| | was changed to be the value of the |
| | default_charset configuration option. |
| | |
| 5.4.0 | |
| | |
| | Default encoding changed from ISO-8859-1 to |
| | UTF-8. |
| | |
| 5.4.0 | |
| | |
| | The constants ENT_HTML401, ENT_XML1, ENT_XHTML |
| | and ENT_HTML5 were added. |
| | |
+--------+---------------------------------------------------+
EXAMPLES
Example #1
Decoding HTML entities
<?php
$orig = "I'll "walk" the <b>dog</b> now";
$a = htmlentities($orig);
$b = html_entity_decode($a);
echo $a; // I'll "walk" the <b>dog</b> now
echo $b; // I'll "walk" the <b>dog</b> now
?>
NOTES
Note
You might wonder why trim(html_entity_decode(' ')); doesn't reduce the string to an empty string, that's because the ' '
entity is not ASCII code 32 (which is stripped by trim(3)) but ASCII code 160 (0xa0) in the default ISO 8859-1 encoding.
SEE ALSO
htmlentities(3), htmlspecialchars(3), get_html_translation_table(3), urldecode(3).
PHP Documentation Group HTML_ENTITY_DECODE(3)