reverse htmlspecialchars

Question

this may seem like a simple problem but I couldn't find it in the archives.

how does one reverse the effects of htmlspecialchars?

I tried something like this:

$trans_tbl = get_html_translation_table (HTML_ENTITIES); $trans_tbl = array_flip ($trans_tbl); $html = strtr ($html, $trans_tbl); 

but it didn't work. is there a simple way to do this?

Answer 1

Use htmlspecialchars_decode()

<?php $str = "<p>this -&gt; &quot;</p>\n";  echo htmlspecialchars_decode($str);  // note that here the quotes aren't converted echo htmlspecialchars_decode($str, ENT_NOQUOTES); ?> 

Reference - PHP Official Doc