How to show actual html in a php page

[Graham]

Hi all,

I've got a quick question regarding php (newbie)

I'm using htmlspecialchar to convet html characters into their entities for storage in the DB, how ever I want the returned text to actually show the html.
I'm still at a learning stage so I've hand coded the following into the DB
<a href="www.somesite.ie">site</a>

however on using html_entity_decode I get back exactly this

<a href="somesite.ie">site</a>

Can anyone point out where I'm going wrong.

Cheers,


Graham

 

[louie]

Isn't that the right result?

I don't seem to follow you...

 

[babyboy808]

Same as Louie, Graham,http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/members/graham.html isn't that what you want?

 

[Graham]

Sorry guys I'm not being clear,

I want the entities to be stored in the DB but when you read a post I actually want the HTML to become active.

For example I did up a quick form to insert the data incase I was incorrect in hand coding.

When inserting the data I call a function to clean the data as below

function cleanData(variable)
{
 
 if(!get_magic_quotes_gpc())
 {
 
  variable=nl2br(variable);
 
  variable=addslashes(variable);
 
 variable= trim(variable);
 
 variable =htmlentities(variable);
 }
 
 return variable;
}

That will convert the html characters into their entites

When I want to show a post I have another function that is run to convert the data back to its original form (at least I think thats what its meant to do) but I'm getting for example

<br /> <br /> <br /> site<br /> <br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com> site</a>

where I actually need the link to show and the <br/> tags to work.

Heres the function

function showRowData(variabe)
{
    if(!get_magic_quotes_gpc())
    {foreach( variable as key  => value)
      {
         stripslashes(value);
 
        html_entity_decode(value);
      }
    } 
}

I can't seem to post the actual varible name so that is why I've used variable , key etc in the post

Hope this makes things clear, sorry if it doesn't have a cold and running on half a brain

 

[louie]

try this:

function un_html_data(value){
  value = html_entity_decode(value);
  return value;
}
//if that doesn't work try
function ewd_clean_html(str){
  find = array("#>#","#<#","#"#");
  replace = array(">","<",""");
  str = preg_replace(find,replace,str);
  return str;
}

 

[Graham]

Thanks Louie,

I'll give it a try later on and see what happens and post back.


Thanks for the help.


Graham

 

[Graham]

Thanks Louie

Hi Louie,

Thanks for the help I got it working with the first one you gave me, I left out part of my code that said it was returning the data for the post from a query whose result set is using extract($row) to allow me access the variable by its name, I was just wondering if there is anyway to do this within a loop when extracting the data instead of having to manually place it in the echo statements. Again sorry for not posting all of the code required half asleep here.

while(row = mysql_fetch_array())
  { extract(row);
    // showRowData();
     echo("<h1>".postTitle."</h1>");
   echo("<h2> Author: ".userName."</h2>");
   echo("<p class='postDate'> Post Date: ".Date."</p>");
   echo("<p>".un_html_data(postText)."<br/>"."</p>");
   echo("<p class='postTag'> Tags: ".postTags."</p>"); 
   }

Cheers, I owe you one.

P.S. The functionality is working but to put it hyperlinks I'm having to type <a href="http://www.irishwebmasterforum">Thanks Louie</a> do you have any links to sites which will teach me how to place them in automatically like the post editor on this site does?

 

[louie]

you can use preg_match to get the url and convert it to proper html link(s)

preg_match("/^(http(s?)://|ftp://{1})((w+.)+)w{2,}(/?)$/i",value ,matches);
value= str_replace(matches[1],"<a href="".matches[1]."">".matches[1]."</a>",value);

you an ad this to the bottom of your un_html_data function

 

[Graham]

Thanks again Louie.

 

[louie]

is not tested so you might need to fiddle with it a little.

 

[lukeat]

that's interesting to see the html special chars code. not done it that way before, i uusually jus tuse mysql_escape and let it keep the html enttites.

grr, why can't i use the quickpost box??