String Functions
PHP Manual

htmlspecialchars_decode

Convert special HTML entities back to characters

Description

string htmlspecialchars_decode(string $string, int $flags = ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE | ENT_HTML401)

This function is the opposite of htmlspecialchars. It converts special HTML entities back to characters.

The converted entities are: &, " (when ENT_NOQUOTES is not set), ' (when ENT_QUOTES is set), < and >.

Parameters

string

The string to decode.

flags

A bitmask of one or more of the following flags, which specify how to handle quotes and which document type to use. The default is ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE | ENT_HTML401.

Available flags constants
Constant Name Description
ENT_COMPAT Will convert double-quotes and leave single-quotes alone.
ENT_QUOTES Will convert both double and single quotes.
ENT_NOQUOTES Will leave both double and single quotes unconverted.
ENT_SUBSTITUTE Replace invalid code unit sequences with a Unicode Replacement Character U+FFFD (UTF-8) or � (otherwise) instead of returning an empty string.
ENT_HTML401 Handle code as HTML 4.01.
ENT_XML1 Handle code as XML 1.
ENT_XHTML Handle code as XHTML.
ENT_HTML5 Handle code as HTML 5.

Return Values

Returns the decoded string.

Changelog

Version Description
8.1.0 flags changed from ENT_COMPAT to ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE | ENT_HTML401.

Examples

Example #1 A htmlspecialchars_decode example

<?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);
?>

The above example will output:

<p>this -> "</p>
<p>this -> &quot;</p>

See Also

  • htmlspecialchars
  • html_entity_decode
  • get_html_translation_table