<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >htmlspecialchars</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="PHP Manual" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="String functions" HREF="ref.strings.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="htmlentities" HREF="function.htmlentities.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="implode" HREF="function.implode.html"><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="refentry" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >PHP Manual</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="function.htmlentities.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="function.implode.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><H1 ><A NAME="function.htmlspecialchars" ></A >htmlspecialchars</H1 ><DIV CLASS="refnamediv" ><A NAME="AEN89658" ></A ><P > (PHP 3, PHP 4 )</P >htmlspecialchars -- Convert special characters to HTML entities </DIV ><DIV CLASS="refsect1" ><A NAME="AEN89661" ></A ><H2 >Description</H2 >string <B CLASS="methodname" >htmlspecialchars</B > ( string string [, int quote_style [, string charset]])<BR ></BR ><P > Certain characters have special significance in HTML, and should be represented by HTML entities if they are to preserve their meanings. This function returns a string with some of these conversions made; the translations made are those most useful for everyday web programming. If you require all HTML character entities to be translated, use <A HREF="function.htmlentities.html" ><B CLASS="function" >htmlentities()</B ></A > instead. </P ><P > This function is useful in preventing user-supplied text from containing HTML markup, such as in a message board or guest book application. The optional second argument, quote_style, tells the function what to do with single and double quote characters. The default mode, ENT_COMPAT, is the backwards compatible mode which only translates the double-quote character and leaves the single-quote untranslated. If ENT_QUOTES is set, both single and double quotes are translated and if ENT_NOQUOTES is set neither single nor double quotes are translated. </P ><P > The translations performed are: <P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P > '&' (ampersand) becomes '&amp;' </P ></LI ><LI ><P > '"' (double quote) becomes '&quot;' when ENT_NOQUOTES is not set. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > ''' (single quote) becomes '&#039;' only when ENT_QUOTES is set. </P ></LI ><LI ><P > '<' (less than) becomes '&lt;' </P ></LI ><LI ><P > '>' (greater than) becomes '&gt;' </P ></LI ></UL > <TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" CLASS="EXAMPLE" ><TR ><TD ><DIV CLASS="example" ><A NAME="AEN89690" ></A ><P ><B >Example 1. <B CLASS="function" >htmlspecialchars()</B > example</B ></P ><TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" CELLPADDING="5" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="php" >$new = htmlspecialchars("<a href='test'>Test</a>", ENT_QUOTES);</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></TD ></TR ></TABLE > </P ><P > Note that this function does not translate anything beyond what is listed above. For full entity translation, see <A HREF="function.htmlentities.html" ><B CLASS="function" >htmlentities()</B ></A >. Support for the optional second argument was added in PHP 3.0.17 and PHP 4.0.3. </P ><P > The third argument defines character set used in conversion. The default character set is ISO-8859-1. Support for this third argument was added in PHP 4.1.0. </P ><P > See also <A HREF="function.get-html-translation-table.html" ><B CLASS="function" >get_html_translation_table()</B ></A >, <A HREF="function.htmlentities.html" ><B CLASS="function" >htmlentities()</B ></A > and <A HREF="function.nl2br.html" ><B CLASS="function" >nl2br()</B ></A >. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="function.htmlentities.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="function.implode.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >htmlentities</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="ref.strings.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >implode</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >