PHP html_entity_decode() Function — PHP

Example

Convert HTML entities to characters:

html

  <?php
$str = '&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.example.com&quot;&gt;example.com&lt;/a&gt;';

  echo html_entity_decode($str);

  ?>

The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source):

html

  <a href="https://www.example.com">example.com</a>

The browser output of the code above will be:

html

example.com

Definition and Usage

The html_entity_decode() function converts HTML entities to characters.

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

Syntax

text

html_entity_decode(string,flags,encoding)

Parameter Values

Parameter	Description
string	Required. Specifies the string to decode
flags	Optional. Specifies how to handle quotes and which document type to use. The available quote styles are: ENT_COMPAT - Decodes only double quotes ENT_QUOTES - Default. Decodes double and single quotes ENT_NOQUOTES - Does not decode any quotes Additional flags for specifying the used doctype: ENT_HTML401 - Default. Handle code as HTML 4.01 ENT_HTML5 - Handle code as HTML 5 ENT_XML1 - Handle code as XML 1 ENT_XHTML - Handle code as XHTML
encoding	Optional. A string that specifies which character-set to use. Allowed values are: UTF-8 - Default. ASCII compatible multi-byte 8-bit Unicode ISO-8859-1 - Western European ISO-8859-15 - Western European (adds the Euro sign + French and Finnish letters missing in ISO-8859-1) 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 MacRoman - Character-set that was used by Mac OS

Technical Details

Return Value:	Returns the decoded string
PHP Version:	4.3.0+
Changelog:	PHP 8.0 - encoding is nullable now

More Examples

Example

Convert some HTML entities to characters:

html

  <?php

  $str = "Albert Einstein said: &#039;E=MC&sup2;&#039;";
echo
  html_entity_decode($str, ENT_COMPAT); // Will only convert double quotes

  echo "<br>";
echo html_entity_decode($str, ENT_QUOTES); // Converts double
  and single quotes

  echo "<br>";
echo html_entity_decode($str, ENT_NOQUOTES); // Does not
  convert any quotes

  ?>

The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source):

html

  Albert Einstein said: &#039;E=MC²&#039;<br>
Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'<br>

  Albert Einstein said: &#039;E=MC²&#039;

The browser output of the code above will be:

html

  Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'
Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'
Albert
  Einstein said: 'E=MC²'

Example

Convert some HTML entities to characters, using the Western European character-set:

html

  <?php

  $str = "My name is &Oslash;yvind &Aring;sane. I&#039;m Norwegian.";

  echo html_entity_decode($str, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8");

  ?>

The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source):

html

  My name is Øyvind Åsane. I'm Norwegian.

The browser output of the code above will be:

html

My name is Øyvind Åsane. I'm Norwegian.

Example

Convert HTML entities to characters:

html

  <?php
$str = '&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.example.com&quot;&gt;example.com&lt;/a&gt;';

  echo html_entity_decode($str);

  ?>

The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source):

html

  <a href="https://www.example.com">example.com</a>

The browser output of the code above will be:

html

example.com

Definition and Usage

The html_entity_decode() function converts HTML entities to characters.

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

Syntax

text

html_entity_decode(string,flags,encoding)

Parameter Values

Parameter	Description
string	Required. Specifies the string to decode
flags	Optional. Specifies how to handle quotes and which document type to use. The available quote styles are: ENT_COMPAT - Decodes only double quotes ENT_QUOTES - Default. Decodes double and single quotes ENT_NOQUOTES - Does not decode any quotes Additional flags for specifying the used doctype: ENT_HTML401 - Default. Handle code as HTML 4.01 ENT_HTML5 - Handle code as HTML 5 ENT_XML1 - Handle code as XML 1 ENT_XHTML - Handle code as XHTML
encoding	Optional. A string that specifies which character-set to use. Allowed values are: UTF-8 - Default. ASCII compatible multi-byte 8-bit Unicode ISO-8859-1 - Western European ISO-8859-15 - Western European (adds the Euro sign + French and Finnish letters missing in ISO-8859-1) 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 MacRoman - Character-set that was used by Mac OS

Technical Details

Return Value:	Returns the decoded string
PHP Version:	4.3.0+
Changelog:	PHP 8.0 - encoding is nullable now

More Examples

Example

Convert some HTML entities to characters:

html

  <?php

  $str = "Albert Einstein said: &#039;E=MC&sup2;&#039;";
echo
  html_entity_decode($str, ENT_COMPAT); // Will only convert double quotes

  echo "<br>";
echo html_entity_decode($str, ENT_QUOTES); // Converts double
  and single quotes

  echo "<br>";
echo html_entity_decode($str, ENT_NOQUOTES); // Does not
  convert any quotes

  ?>

The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source):

html

  Albert Einstein said: &#039;E=MC²&#039;<br>
Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'<br>

  Albert Einstein said: &#039;E=MC²&#039;

The browser output of the code above will be:

html

  Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'
Albert Einstein said: 'E=MC²'
Albert
  Einstein said: 'E=MC²'

Example

Convert some HTML entities to characters, using the Western European character-set:

html

  <?php

  $str = "My name is &Oslash;yvind &Aring;sane. I&#039;m Norwegian.";

  echo html_entity_decode($str, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8");

  ?>

The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source):

html

  My name is Øyvind Åsane. I'm Norwegian.

The browser output of the code above will be:

html

My name is Øyvind Åsane. I'm Norwegian.