too long

Question

I am storing formatted string in database using PHP. And displaying that string in td of HTML table. My sample text is like-

<font color="#0033CC"><b>water </b>releasing<i> H<sub>3</sub>O<sup>+</sup></i> ions; </font>

When displaying in td, it just displaying this raw data instead of formatted text. I have viewed the source in browser and found below data.

<td>&lt;font color=&quot;#0033CC&quot;&gt;&lt;b&gt;water &lt;/b&gt;releasing&lt;i&gt; H&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/i&gt; ions; &lt;/font&gt;</td>`

That means " is replaced with " > is replaced with > and so on.

Is there any built in approach in PHP to avoid this scenario and displaying formatted text?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You could use html_entity_decode();

<?php
$orig = 'J\'ai "sorti" le <strong>chien</strong> tout à l\'heure';
$a = htmlentities($orig);
$b = html_entity_decode($a);

echo $a; // J'ai &quot;sorti&quot; le &lt;strong&gt;chien&lt;/strong&gt; tout &amp;agrave; l'heure
echo $b; // J'ai "sorti" le <strong>chien</strong> tout à l'heure

?>