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PHP html_entity_decode() Function

PHP String Reference Complete PHP String Reference

Definition and Usage

The html_entity_decode() function converts HTML entities to characters.

The html_entity_decode() function is the opposite of htmlentities().

Syntax

html_entity_decode(string,quotestyle,character-set)

Parameter Description
string Required. Specifies the string to decode
quotestyle Optional. Specifies how to decode single and double quotes.

The available quote styles are:

  • ENT_COMPAT - Default. Decodes only double quotes
  • ENT_QUOTES - Decodes double and single quotes
  • ENT_NOQUOTES - Does not decode any quotes
character-set Optional. A string that specifies which character-set to use.

Allowed values are:

  • ISO-8859-1 - Default. Western European
  • ISO-8859-15 - Western European (adds the Euro sign + French and Finnish letters missing in ISO-8859-1)
  • UTF-8 - ASCII compatible multi-byte 8-bit Unicode
  • cp866 - DOS-specific Cyrillic charset
  • cp1251 - Windows-specific Cyrillic charset
  • cp1252 - Windows specific charset for Western European
  • KOI8-R - Russian
  • BIG5 - Traditional Chinese, mainly used in Taiwan
  • GB2312 - Simplified Chinese, national standard character set
  • BIG5-HKSCS - Big5 with Hong Kong extensions
  • Shift_JIS - Japanese
  • EUC-JP - Japanese

Tips and Notes

Note: Unrecognized character-sets will be ignored and replaced by ISO-8859-1.

Example 1

<?php
$str = "Jane &amp; &#039;Tarzan&#039;";
echo html_entity_decode($str);
echo "<br />";
echo html_entity_decode($str, ENT_QUOTES);
echo "<br />";
echo html_entity_decode($str, ENT_NOQUOTES);
?>

The browser output of the code above will be:

Jane & 'Tarzan'
Jane & 'Tarzan'
Jane & 'Tarzan'

If you select "View source" in the browser window, you will see the following HTML:

<html>
<body>
Jane & &#039;Tarzan&#039;<br />
Jane & 'Tarzan'<br />
Jane & &#039;Tarzan&#039;
</body>
</html>

Example 2

<html>
<body>
<?php
$str = "My name is &Oslash;yvind &Aring;sane. I&#039;m Norwegian";
echo html_entity_decode($str, ENT_QUOTES, "ISO-8859-1");
?>
</body>
</html>

The browser output of the code above will be:

My name is Øyvind Åsane. I'm Norwegian

If you select "View source" in the browser window, you will see the following HTML:

<html>
<body>
My name is Øyvind Åsane. I'm Norwegian
</body>
</html>

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