PHP - Removing the effect of HTML tags in string - BUT displaying them as well?

Question

Consider strip_tags() .

strip_tags("<b>TEXT</b>");

Output:

TEXT

But what if i want to nullify the effect of the tags but display them as well?

Output:

<b>TEXT</b>

Would i have to use preg_replace() ? Or is there a more elegant solution available?

Thanks :D

Answer 1

You can HTML encode the string via htmlspecialchars:

htmlspecialchars("<b>TEXT</b>");

Answer 2

You can easily convert characters to their HTML entity using htmlspecialchars or htmlentities. Make sure you check the PHP manual to determine what is most appropriate to your data, as both functions operate slightly differently.

You can then reverse the encoding with htmlspecialchars_decode and html_entity_decode - again, check which is most appropriate for your data.