How Do I use htmlspecialchars but allow only specific HTML code to pass through without getting converted?

Question

Here is the line of code I have which works great:

$content = htmlspecialchars($_POST['content'], ENT_QUOTES);

But what I would like to do is allow only certain types of HTML code to pass through without getting converted. Here is the list of HTML code that I would like to have pass:

<pre> </pre>
<b> </b>
<em> </em>
<u> </u>
<ul> </ul>
<li> </li>
<ol> </ol>

And as I go, I would like to also be able to add in more HTML later as I think of it. Could someone help me modify the code above so that the specified list of HTML codes above can pass through without getting converted?

Answer 1

I suppose you could do it after the fact:

// $str is the result of htmlspecialchars()
preg_replace('#&lt;(/?(?:pre|b|em|u|ul|li|ol))&gt;#', '<\1>', $str);

It allows the encoded version of <xx> and </xx> where xx is in a controlled set of allowed tags.