Htmlentities not working

General PHP Help
#1

Can someone please look at this code and tell me what I’m doing wrong? I have run phpinfo and it is all set to UTF-8, but my htmlentities aren’t converting.

<!DOCTYPE html>

<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
</head>

<html>
<body style="margin-left:50px">

<?php

$stringin="“I think Carey … is steering away from the concept that a mystery novel is solely about who did it. For her it is more a case of whether people will get away with their misdeeds…”—Kate Jackson, Cross Examining Crime. New introduction by Curtis Evans. July 2022.";

echo $stringin;

$new = htmlentities($stringin, ENT_QUOTES | ENT_DISALLOWED | ENT_SUBSTITUTE, "UTF-8");

echo "<br><br>new = ";
echo $new;

?>

</body>
</html>
#2

It is actually working. The browser is converting what you see. If you add

header(‘Content-Type: text/plain’);

you will see what is actually there.

<?php
$stringin="“I think Carey … is steering away from the concept that a mystery novel is solely about who did it. For her it is more a case of whether people will get away with their misdeeds…”—Kate Jackson, Cross Examining Crime. New introduction by Curtis Evans. July 2022.";
$new = htmlentities($stringin, ENT_QUOTES | ENT_DISALLOWED | ENT_SUBSTITUTE, "UTF-8");
header('Content-Type: text/plain');
echo $new;
#3

That doesn’t solve my problem. I need the string to appear on the screen with all of the non-standard characters – quotes, ellipses, emdashes, etc. – visible to the user.

#4

What is the real problem you are trying to solve by doing this?

#5

My user enters a string with quotes, ellipses, italics, etc. I need to be able to store that string in MySQL. Later, I will get that string and use it to populate a webpage. When it appears on the webpage, it needs to appear just how the user wrote it, with quotes, ellipses, etc.

Ordinarily, I would write html codes to replace those characters for each instance, but I want it automated so that I don’t have to rewrite every string by hand.

#6

If your putting it in a database, then put it in there. Use PDO with Prepared Statements.

When you output the data from the db use htmlspecialchars,
https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php

Then you are ordinarily doing it wrong. You don’t replace anything.

#7

OK, I saved it to the database. In the databse, I can see quotes, ellipses, etc.
When I pull it from the database and use either htmlspecialchars or htmlentities, the string still appears with invalid characters.

$con = mysqli_connect(‘localhost’, $loginName, $password,‘StarkHousePressMain’);
if (!$con) {
die(“Could not connect. Please check your password and try again later.”);
}
$result = mysqli_query($con,“SELECT * FROM testertext”);
$rowcount=mysqli_num_rows($result);

while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result))
{
$new = htmlspecialchars($row[textin], ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE);
echo $new;
}

#8

Can you provide a zip of everything I need to run it?

I have no idea how you are inserting it. What “invalid characters”?

#9

I’ve created a zip file and granted you database access. I’ve also included a screen shot of what I’m getting back from the database. I really appreciate any help you can give! I’ve been going crazy over this!

Where would you like me to send the zip file?

#10

I just tested your code and it outputs correctly. The only problem in helpget.php is this is missing quotes.

This $row[textin] should be $row[‘textin’]

I did not test helpput.php. I just entered the text string directly to the database.

output
output1522×148 13.6 KB

#11

Can I ask what browser you’re using? Maybe it’s a browser issue, since mine is still garbled. And did you use your own server for the database? Or mine? Thanks!

#12

I used my own DB and Firefox.

What does “garbled” mean? Post a screenshot. Might be a Character set issue. DB should be using utf8mb4

#13

It looks the same as the screenshot I sent you. I’m trying different char sets on the database to see if I can get it to work. I will most likely have to talk to the DB admin. I really appreciate all your help!

#14

I didn’t notice the screenshot before. That would be an encoding problem. You are using “fancy quotes” aka “Smart quotes” and it is not supported by the charset you are using.

#15

No it doesn’t. Do you see anything “garbled” in my screenshot? Look at the one you sent me again.

#16

You were right. It’s an encoding issue. I’ll check with my DB admin in the next few days. Thanks again!

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