php - textarea- html tags

Question

I am new to programming with php. I've done that: There is a textarea that user writes text, and it is saved to db. But when listing the entries, the text with html tags are shown as html elements.

For example, "I'm < b >25< /b > years old" is shown "I'm 25 years old".

I want to show it as what user writes on textarea, not applying html rules. And due to this, user can not break multiple lines.

How can I avoid all html properties? is there any function or something else to help me?

Answer 1

Run the posted content through htmlentities:

$var = htmlentities($old_var);

Note: you should also be making sure you're not making yourself vulnerable to SQL injection.