Database for Content - OK to store HTML?

Question

Basic question is - is it safe to store HTML in a database if I restrict who can submit to it?

I have a pretty simple question. I provide video tutorials and other content. Without spending months writing a proper BBCode parser, I would need to store the HTML so I can have it look exactly the way I want when I grab it from the database.

Basically I plan to store all information in the database about a tutorial series and each episode. I would like to have some formatting for the descriptions for both so I can add multiple paragraphs, ordered and unordered lists, links to required resources, and so on.

I am using PHP and creating my own database. I am using phpMyAdmin to store the information in the table right now. I will use a user with read only rights when I pull the information in the PHP code.

What is the best way to do this? Thank you!

Answer 1

Like others have pointed out there's nothing dangerous about storing HTML in the DB. But when you display it you need to know the HTML is safe. Seeing as you're the only one editing the HTML I see no problem.

However, I wouldn't store HTML at all. If all you need are headings, paragraphs, lists, links, images etc I'd say Markdown is a perfect fit. The benefit with Markdown is that it looks just like normal text (ie you could send your articles as e-mails or save them as txt-documents), it takes up a lot less space than HTML and you don't have to change it once HTML gets updated.

http://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/