How to allow html tags on textarea, PHP to MySQL?

Question

How to allow these types of HTML tags inside the textarea for PHP into MySQL? The simple ones maybe... <b>, <i>, <u> etc.

Thank you.

How are they not allowed now? If you are using htmlspecialchars() when putting the data back in the textarea later, there should be no issue. — Brad
– Brad, Commented Sep 10, 2011 at 2:35

Tommy Bravo · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-14 15:29:37Z

4

The php function strip_tags can be used for stripping all html tags except for $allowable_tags. Which can be specified like this:

strip_tags($textareaUserInput, '<b><i><u>');

I guess it's something like this that you want. However this doesn't solve possible problems with special characters that need to be escaped.

Also: Have a look at HTML Purifier as @Phil suggest in his comment. This is especialy a good idea if you are worried about security loopholes like XSS and such, because strip_tags won't be good enough if you allow certain tags to persist.

edited Sep 14, 2017 at 15:29

answered Sep 16, 2011 at 9:43

Tommy Bravo

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MC Emperor · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-16 09:20:15Z

0

You can leave HTML-tags as is, because both PHP and MySQL don't have problems with that. When retrieving data from the database and place it inside the textarea, make sure to use htmlspecialchars() to convert characters with a special meaning to HTML-entities. For example < will be converted to <.

answered Sep 16, 2011 at 9:20

MC Emperor

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