htmlentities() vs. htmlspecialchars()

php

Solution

From the PHP documentation for htmlentities:

This function is identical to `htmlspecialchars()` in all ways, except with `htmlentities()`, all characters which have HTML character entity equivalents are translated into these entities.

From the PHP documentation for htmlspecialchars:

Certain characters have special significance in HTML, and should be represented by HTML entities if they are to preserve their meanings. This function returns a string with some of these conversions made; the translations made are those most useful for everyday web programming. If you require all HTML character entities to be translated, use `htmlentities()` instead.

The difference is what gets encoded. The choices are everything (entities) or "special" characters, like ampersand, double and single quotes, less than, and greater than (specialchars).

I prefer to use `htmlspecialchars` whenever possible.

For example:

    echo htmlentities('<Il était une fois un être>.');
    // Output: &lt;Il &eacute;tait une fois un &ecirc;tre&gt;.
    //                ^^^^^^^^                 ^^^^^^^

    echo htmlspecialchars('<Il était une fois un être>.');
    // Output: &lt;Il était une fois un être&gt;.
    //                ^                 ^

Problem

Original source