php, how to convert special characters to text?

Question

xxxi have the_title() that returns some text, in this case Blue & Whiny

the problem as we can see is that the & character looks different

how do i turn Blue & Whiny into Blue & Whiny i tryed: htmlspecialchars_decode(the_title()), html_entity_decode(the_title()),htmlspecialchars(the_title()) and nothing.

i want to convert & to &

there is not much code to share, I just do this: <?php the_title() ?> and i get Blue & Whiny. If i use get_the_title() it wont display anything

Any ideas? Thanks

edit1. ill share some code:

<script type="text/javascript">
function showShareUI() {

var act = new gigya.services.socialize.UserAction();
act.setUserMessage("Check out this article.");
act.setTitle("Trends on Explore Talent - <?php  the_title(); ?>");
act.setDescription("<?php  get_the_content();  ?>");
act.setLinkBack("<?php  the_permalink();  ?>");
act.addActionLink("Check out this article", "<?php the_permalink(); ?>");

var image = {
src: 'http://xxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/BOTTOM_BANNER.jpg',
href: '<?php the_permalink();?>',
type: 'image'
}
act.addMediaItem(image);

var params = 
{
userAction: act,  // The UserAction object enfolding the newsfeed data.                                           
onError: onError,  // onError method will be summoned if an error occurs. 
onSendDone: onSendDone // onError method will be summoned after 
,showEmailButton: true
    // Gigya finishes the publishing process.
};

gigya.services.socialize.showShareUI(conf, params);
}

function onError(event) {
alert('An error has occured' + ': ' + event.errorCode + '; ' + event.errorMessage);
}

function onSendDone(event)
{
document.getElementById('status').style.color = "green";
document.getElementById('status').innerHTML = 'The newsfeed has been posted to: ' +     event.providers;
}
</script>

I've tried everything. This starts to annoy me...

Have you tried `html_entity_decode(the_title())` on it's own? And if yes, what's the result — Mick Hansen, Jul 13 '11 at 18:37
What you want is to display `Blue & Whiny` as `Blue & Whiny` or do something else??? — Balanivash, Jul 13 '11 at 18:40
then just echo it, it'll get converted, without u needing to do anything else.. — Balanivash, Jul 13 '11 at 18:43
@Mick: FYI: Wordpress does direct output on its functions unless you use the get_the_whatever() version, which returns the data instead. It'd have to be `html_entity_decode(get_the_title())` instead. — Marc B, Jul 13 '11 at 18:45
html_entity_decode works, can you post some code attempting to use `html_entity_decode` to see what else it might be. — bcoughlan, Jul 13 '11 at 18:46
@ Marc B - if i use `get_the_title()` instead of `the_title()` it wont display anything. the same with `the_permalink()` — Patrioticcow, Jul 13 '11 at 18:47
What happens when you echo it? Can you `echo "Hello World"` to check if it's an empty variable problem or an echo problem? — bcoughlan, Jul 13 '11 at 18:47
possible duplicate of [Reverse htmlentities()](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6465263/reverse-htmlentities) — David Snabel-Caunt, Jul 13 '11 at 18:48
If echoing works but echoing the result of html_entity_decode does nothing, then I can only guess that the_title() is returning an empty string. Ensure you have error reporting turned on too. — bcoughlan, Jul 13 '11 at 19:07
@Patrioticcow Hi, check out the answer I posted. I tested it and it seems to work :) — Nick Rolando, Jul 13 '11 at 20:45
`evil title"); alert("owned`. Or are you sure there aren't going to be any double quotes (let alone user content) in the title, or any of the other fields? — mercator, Jul 14 '11 at 09:08

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 13 '11 at 18:49

html_entity_decode() is the correct way to do it.

html_entity_decode("Blue &#038; Whiny");

Will produce:

Blue & Whiny

If it's not working, make sure you don't have another issue - such as passing a string to it that is double encoded, or running htmlentities() on the string again later.

Demo: http://codepad.org/BHXGWXJi

Double check with a literal string and var_dump() the output, you should see the decoded version. Then var_dump(the_title()), to make sure you are actually passing what you think you are to html_entity_decode().

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 13 '11 at 18:49

5

html_entity_decode should do the trick. If not, try to specify the third parameter $charset.

Something like:

echo html_entity_decode(the_title(), ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');

answered Jul 13 '11 at 18:49

AlexV

22,658
18
85
122

This solution ended up working for me. If it's of help to future readers, here's my specific "Disqus" implementation: `disqus_title='=addslashes(html_entity_decode(get_the_title($post->ID), ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'))?> | Company Name'` (`json_encode()` also works in place of `addslashes`, though the syntax needs to be adjusted slightly). – mhulse May 19 '14 at 19:28

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:30

the_title() directly prints the title, so adding html_entity_decode() directly around that won't work. You can, however, stop it from printing with its third function argument. E.g.

<?php echo html_entity_decode(the_title('', '', false)) ?>

There's also get_the_title(), which doesn't directly print the title, but it requires the ID of the post you want the title of, in contrast with the_title, which prints the title of the current post in The Loop. So you need to do something like this:

<?php echo html_entity_decode(get_the_title($post->ID)) ?>

And actually, you should be able to simply do:

<?php echo $post->post_title ?>

The only reason these utility functions are there is to escape things for you and add tags and stuff. If you just want the raw input, you can print it directly.

This won't fix all of your issues, though, because you're echoing it inside a JavaScript string, so you need to escape certain characters. json_encode() should do the trick, but see the question "Pass a PHP string to a Javascript variable (including escaping newlines)" for more details.

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 13 '11 at 18:57

2

Try this:

echo(mb_convert_encoding(the_title(), "UTF-8", "HTML-ENTITIES"));

answered Jul 13 '11 at 18:57

the same result, the characters don't get converted – Patrioticcow Jul 13 '11 at 18:59
are you sure you have semicolon in the end of &";"? – Jul 13 '11 at 19:03

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 13 '11 at 18:59

see if this works for ya

$convmap = array (0x0, 0xffff, 0, 0xffff);
//$str = mb_decode_numericentity (the_title(), $convmap, 'UTF-8' );
$str = mb_decode_numericentity ("&#038;", $convmap, 'UTF-8' );
echo $str;

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mb-decode-numericentity.php

php, how to convert special characters to text?

5 Answers5