htmlspecialchars Convert special characters to HTML entities &reftitle.description; stringhtmlspecialchars stringstring intflagsENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE | ENT_HTML401 stringnullencoding&null; booldouble_encode&true; 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 these conversions made. If you require all input substrings that have associated named entities to be translated, use htmlentities instead. If the input string passed to this function and the final document share the same character set, this function is sufficient to prepare input for inclusion in most contexts of an HTML document. If, however, the input can represent characters that are not coded in the final document character set and you wish to retain those characters (as numeric or named entities), both this function and htmlentities (which only encodes substrings that have named entity equivalents) may be insufficient. You may have to use mb_encode_numericentity instead. Character Replacement & (ampersand) &amp; " (double quote) &quot;, unless ENT_NOQUOTES is set ' (single quote) &#039; (for ENT_HTML401) or &apos; (for ENT_XML1, ENT_XHTML or ENT_HTML5), but only when ENT_QUOTES is set < (less than) &lt; > (greater than) &gt; &reftitle.parameters; string The string being converted. flags A bitmask of one or more of the following flags, which specify how to handle quotes, invalid code unit sequences and the used document type. The default is ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE | ENT_HTML401. 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 unconverted. ENT_IGNORE Silently discard invalid code unit sequences instead of returning an empty string. Using this flag is discouraged as it may have security implications. ENT_SUBSTITUTE Replace invalid code unit sequences with a Unicode Replacement Character U+FFFD (UTF-8) or &#xFFFD; (otherwise) instead of returning an empty string. ENT_DISALLOWED Replace invalid code points for the given document type with a Unicode Replacement Character U+FFFD (UTF-8) or &#xFFFD; (otherwise) instead of leaving them as is. This may be useful, for instance, to ensure the well-formedness of XML documents with embedded external content. 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. encoding &strings.parameter.encoding; For the purposes of this function, the encodings ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15, UTF-8, cp866, cp1251, cp1252, and KOI8-R are effectively equivalent, provided the string itself is valid for the encoding, as the characters affected by htmlspecialchars occupy the same positions in all of these encodings. &reference.strings.charsets; double_encode When double_encode is turned off PHP will not encode existing html entities, the default is to convert everything. &reftitle.returnvalues; The converted string. If the input string contains an invalid code unit sequence within the given encoding an empty string will be returned, unless either the ENT_IGNORE or ENT_SUBSTITUTE flags are set. &reftitle.changelog; &Version; &Description; 8.1.0 flags changed from ENT_COMPAT to ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE | ENT_HTML401. &reftitle.examples; Test", ENT_QUOTES); echo $new; // <a href='test'>Test</a> ?> ]]> &reftitle.notes; Note that this function does not translate anything beyond what is listed above. For full entity translation, see htmlentities. In case of an ambiguous flags value, the following rules apply: When neither of ENT_COMPAT, ENT_QUOTES, ENT_NOQUOTES is present, the default is ENT_NOQUOTES. When more than one of ENT_COMPAT, ENT_QUOTES, ENT_NOQUOTES is present, ENT_QUOTES takes the highest precedence, followed by ENT_COMPAT. When neither of ENT_HTML401, ENT_HTML5, ENT_XHTML, ENT_XML1 is present, the default is ENT_HTML401. When more than one of ENT_HTML401, ENT_HTML5, ENT_XHTML, ENT_XML1 is present, ENT_HTML5 takes the highest precedence, followed by ENT_XHTML, ENT_XML1 and ENT_HTML401. When more than one of ENT_DISALLOWED, ENT_IGNORE, ENT_SUBSTITUTE are present, ENT_IGNORE takes the highest precedence, followed by ENT_SUBSTITUTE. &reftitle.seealso; get_html_translation_table htmlspecialchars_decode strip_tags htmlentities nl2br