PHP Htmlentities function not encoding string to database using PDO

Question

I have a string (foreign language) and I need to convert to htmlentities.
I'm runing a php script from my terminal on linux Ubuntu.

I need this:

$str = "Ettől a pillanattól kezdve,"

To become something like this:

EttЗl a pillanattßl kezdve,

$str = "Ettől a pillanattól kezdve,";
$strEncoded = htmlentities($str, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8");  

$cmd = $pdo->prepare("UPDATE table SET field = :a");
$cmd->bindValue(":a", $strEncoded);  

$cmd->execute();

Database/Table Information:

Charset: utf8
Collation: utf8_general_ci

It is not saving as expected. Obs: I know it's not the best practice to use htmlentities to save into database, but I need to do it this way.

Example 2:

$a = "Quantit&#224; totale delle";
$b = html_entity_decode($a);
echo $a; //output: Quantit&#224; totale delle
echo $b; //output: Quantità totale delle (Need the reverse)
echo htmlspecialchars($b, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8') . "\n"; //output: Quantità totale delle (didn't convert the special character to `&#224;`

You should have a `WHERE` clause in the `UPDATE` statement, otherwise it will update every row. — Barmar, May 26 '20 at 21:45
Does this answer your question? [UTF-8 all the way through](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/279170/utf-8-all-the-way-through) — Martin, May 26 '20 at 21:49
@Martin Me too. I need all the special characters become like the example I showed. Pretty sure it's done with `htmlentities`, but I have no idea why it's not working. Something like `"Ett{l a pillanattèl kezdveŁ"` — PlayHardGoPro, May 26 '20 at 21:50
@PlayHardGoPro your main motive is to store in database without causing any changes in original string right ? — Prince Arora, May 26 '20 at 23:09
htmlentities do not encode anything "using PDO". it's a self-sufficient function that has nothing to do with PDO or any other PHP function. — Your Common Sense, May 27 '20 at 05:54
@PrinceArora Yes, sir. I'm working with legacy code, so I can't change the way it is done. — PlayHardGoPro, May 27 '20 at 20:37
is this the function you need? https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.ord.php#109812 or am i mistaken — UnpassableWizard, May 28 '20 at 20:31

NVRM · Answer 1 · 2020-05-26T23:14:46.597

To match the question, you have to rebuild the entity yourself using the dec value. This will works with strings like you specified:

<?php 
$str = str_split("Ettől a pillanattól kezdve,");

foreach ($str as $k => $v){
 echo "&#".ord($v).";";  
} 
// &#69;&#116;&#116;&#197;&#145;&#108;&#32;&#97;&#32;&#112;&#105;&#108;&#108;&#97;&#110;&#97;&#116;&#116;&#195;&#179;&#108;&#32;&#107;&#101;&#122;&#100;&#118;&#101;&#44;

But this won't work for chars above 255.

https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.ord.php

Interprets the binary value of the first byte of string as an unsigned integer between 0 and 255. If the string is in a single-byte encoding, such as ASCII, ISO-8859, or Windows 1252, this is equivalent to returning the position of a character in the character set's mapping table. However, note that this function is not aware of any string encoding, and in particular will never identify a Unicode code point in a multi-byte encoding such as UTF-8 or UTF-16.

That is `almost` what I need. Trying to find a whay to do that but only with the special characters :S — PlayHardGoPro, May 28 '20 at 14:09

PHP Htmlentities function not encoding string to database using PDO

Database/Table Information:

Example 2:

1 Answers1