htmlentities returning empty string

Question

The following code outputs an empty string. The cause is the "ó" in $text, but why? What characters does utf-8 encode then?

The problem is solved when using iso-8859-1, but I need to use utf-8, so what am I doing wrong?

<!doctype html>
<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
</head>

<body>
<?
$text = 'Hola ó Hola';
$text = htmlentities($text,ENT_QUOTES,'utf-8');
echo $text;
?>
</body>
</html>

Strange, your code seems to work fine on my computer. (returns ó) - the only thing I changed was changing <? to <?php, you could try that. — Ross
– Ross, Commented Dec 9, 2011 at 2:39
I Think i may be saving my files in the wrong charset ? Is that possible ? — Tom
– Tom, Commented Dec 9, 2011 at 3:15

jgreep · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-29 16:24:25Z

39

I had a similar issue and used the flag ENT_SUBSTITUTE to prevent the empty string. It still didn't encode, and I couldn't rely on the file being UTF-8, so I converted the encoding on just the string:

$text = htmlentities(mb_convert_encoding($text, 'UTF-8', 'ASCII'), ENT_SUBSTITUTE, "UTF-8");

answered Jul 29, 2015 at 16:24

jgreep

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2 Comments

bjacobs Over a year ago

This is the option that worked for me as far as the string not being blank, but it is not showing the special characters, those are just omitted from the string. Any ideas on how to get the special characters to show? In my case, it is a bullet, read in from an old db.

John Kurlak Over a year ago

$text = htmlentities(utf8_encode($text)); also works.

Halcyon · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-09 02:37:25Z

8

Make sure you save your source file as UTf-8 if it contains the string. Else make sure that whatever is supplying the string supplies it as UTF-8.

answered Dec 9, 2011 at 2:37

Halcyon

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10 Comments

Tom Over a year ago

What if the source of the text is a $_POST ? Where do i get the char set encoding?

Halcyon Over a year ago

If the POST request comes from a form on the same website which emits a utf-8 meta-charset you can assume the input charset will be utf-8 as well (your browser should adhere to whatever charset header is emitted, but it might chose not to at the users discretion). I suppose you could try some PHP functions to see what PHP thinks the charset is; like iconv_get_encoding but I've used it with mixed success.

Tom Over a year ago

K thanks. Is there any resource/guide that could help me understand charsets better ? Im just confused with so many charsets: The charset on <meta charset="">, the charset on MySQL collation, the charset on which the file is saved. It messed my head up :P

Halcyon Over a year ago

It's very simple really. Always use utf-8 for everything, always. Source files, MySQL NAMES the who shebang. But yea, you do have to always specific that you want utf-8 because for some bizarre reason it's not the default.

Tom Over a year ago

The problem is, as far as i can tell, i AM using utf-8 for everything, but something's not getting encoded ! How can i contact u personally so i can explain my error please ? :)

|

Thiago Elias · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-31 00:23:07Z

0

Open your code editor (notepad++ for instance or other).
Click in New > Save As.. put the name of file (blank for a while) and in type select PHP Hypertext ...
Now copy all content of your original file and put in this new file.
Click in save and try.

edited Mar 31, 2017 at 0:23

Thiago Elias

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answered Mar 30, 2017 at 22:38

Ciniro Nametala

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Comments

Floutsch · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-21 09:37:33Z

0

Just commenting for others who may have a similar problem as myself. $var containing special characters. This …

<?= htmlentities($var) ?>

… gave me an empty output, while …

<?php echo htmlentities($var); ?>

… worked fine. Same with htmlspecialchars. Never encountered this before because I normally don't use it that way but here I was just testing something out.

answered Feb 21, 2022 at 9:37

Floutsch

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