I am new to programming with php. I've done that: There is a textarea that user writes text, and it is saved to db. But when listing the entries, the text with html tags are shown as html elements.
For example, "I'm < b >25< /b > years old" is shown "I'm 25 years old".
I want to show it as what user writes on textarea, not applying html rules. And due to this, user can not break multiple lines.
How can I avoid all html properties? is there any function or something else to help me?
Run the posted content through htmlentities:
$var = htmlentities($old_var);
Note: you should also be making sure you're not making yourself vulnerable to SQL injection.
Save it to the database but escape every value that comes from a user to avoid mysql-injections.
Example:
$sqlaction = mysql_query("INSERT INTO posts (text) VALUES ('".mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['text'])."')");
if you want to Show it on a page use htmlentities like this:
<div><?php echo htmlentities($row['text']); ?></div>
