Special characters to HTML ASCII Entity Equivalent

Question

How will I convert all special characters to their corresponding html entity?

Special character would be like $ & / \ { } ( - ' , @ etc.

I tried to use htmlentities() and htmlspecialchars(). But didn't solve my problem.

please check here. I want output like Entity Number i.e. column 3.

Actually the scenario is - I need to take input from fckeditor. and then save into the database. So I need to convert all special character to their corresponding html entity, from the text. Otherwise it's giving me error.

`htmlspecialchars()` ? http://in3.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php — Shankar Narayana Damodaran, Jan 24 '14 at 10:12
@Shankar Damodaran , I forgot to mention - I also tried htmlspecialchars(). but not get output — Ripa Saha, Jan 24 '14 at 10:15
What is the expected output of `$` you are looking for as a HTML entity ? — Shankar Narayana Damodaran, Jan 24 '14 at 10:16
Get the character's code point, then format an SGML entity yourself by prepending `` and appending semicolon. For a head start, adjust the function proposed here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/395832/how-to-get-code-point-number-for-a-given-character-in-a-utf-8-string — Ruud Helderman, Jan 24 '14 at 10:29
@Ruud that's not suitable for me now. Because I need to convert special characters from an fckeditor input. — Ripa Saha, Jan 24 '14 at 10:37
@ripa - My comment is an example? What's wrong with it? Check the code for every special char you want. — divaka, Jan 24 '14 at 10:47
@ripa Test it here for every symbol you want and see the output: http://writecodeonline.com/php/ then compare with the third column here http://www.freeformatter.com/html-entities.html and tell me what I'm misunderstanding? — divaka, Jan 24 '14 at 10:49
@divaka in my question, I've already mentioned htmlspecialchars() not working for me. — Ripa Saha, Jan 24 '14 at 10:51
@ripa did you even test the code?? Pretty sure the way I wrote it is different from the way you've tested. — divaka, Jan 24 '14 at 10:51
@ripa: I have a strong feeling you are not supplying us with all the details necessary to answer your question. In one of your comments you mentioned fckeditor; you did not tag it as such, nor was it mentioned in the question itself. Please edit your question; currently people are speculating about your intentions, which is a total waste of everybody's valuable time IMHO. — Ruud Helderman, Jan 24 '14 at 14:26
@ripa: Thanks for your edit, that really helps; though it still leaves me with many questions. You say you got an error while trying to store text in a database. What error? Which database engine? Accessed through which API? What makes you think HTML-encoding is the solution? Let's take a few steps back, and focus on the error before jumping to conclusions. Also, please show us some code where you write to the database; code often speaks louder than words. — Ruud Helderman, Jan 24 '14 at 19:09
I agree with @Ruud. What exactly is the problem you're encountering? It sounds like you have content being edited with FCKEditor -- give us an example of a problem with the text it returns. There are only a few things which need to be handled before shoving it into a database, so why are you trying to replace so many characters? — Phil Perry, Jan 24 '14 at 19:43
@ripa: No you didn't. At least not since my previous comment. Forgot to save your changes? — Ruud Helderman, Jan 25 '14 at 08:47

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

1

What you are looking is for an ASCII equivalent of a character. So you need to make use of ord().

By the way what divaka mentioned is right.

Do like this..

<?php

function getHTMLASCIIEquiv($val)
{
    $arr=['$','&','/','\\','{','}','(','-','\'',',','@'];
    $val = str_split($val);$str="";
    foreach($val as $v)
    {
        if(in_array($v,$arr))
        {
        $str.="&#".ord($v).";";
        }
        else
        {
            $str.=$v;
        }
    }
    return $str;
}

echo getHTMLASCIIEquiv('please check $100 & get email from test@cc.com');

OUTPUT :

please check &#36;100 &#38; get email from test&#64;cc.com

Demo

edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

Community

1
1

answered Jan 24 '14 at 10:55

Shankar Narayana Damodaran

68,075
43
96
126

please try for $char = "$ & / \ { } ( - ' ,"; this string. not giving me the mentioned output. – Ripa Saha Jan 24 '14 at 11:06
@ripa, It is working like as it should. Check out the demo in the answer. – Shankar Narayana Damodaran Jan 24 '14 at 11:23
@ShankarDamodaran for an specific case it's working. but check You demo. I've posted actual string. – Ripa Saha Jan 24 '14 at 11:41
@ripa, You can't modify the demo I guess as it is IP based. Can you post it on your question or make your own demo and link it here ? – Shankar Narayana Damodaran Jan 24 '14 at 11:53
the text is "please check $100 & get email from test@cc.com" – Ripa Saha Jan 24 '14 at 12:01
1

@ShankarDamodaran I'm pretty sure that ripa's problem is that browser or text editor or wherever she use this, is translating the entity into the corresponding symbols and she is seeing the entity, not the symbol itself! – divaka Jan 24 '14 at 13:26

Special characters to HTML ASCII Entity Equivalent

1 Answers1