Print special characters in php

After much banging-head-on-table, I have a bit better understanding of the issue that I wanted to post for anyone else who may have had this issue.

While the UTF-8 character set will display special characters on the client, the server, on the other hand, may not be so accomodating and would print special characters such as à and è as � and �.

To make sure your server will print them correctly, use the ISO-8859-1 charset:

This will print correctly: àè

Edit (4 years later):

I have a little better understanding now. The reason this works is that the client (browser) is being told, through the response header(), to expect an ISO-8859-1 text/html file. (As others have mentioned, you can also do this by updating your .ini or .htaccess files.) Then, once the browser begins to parse that given file into the DOM, the output will obey any rule but keep your ISO characters intact.

❮ PHP String Reference

Example

Convert the predefined characters "<" (less than) and ">" (greater than) to HTML entities:

$str = "This is some bold text.";
echo htmlspecialchars($str);
?>

The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source):

This is some <b>bold</b> text.

The browser output of the code above will be:

This is some bold text.

Try it Yourself »

Definition and Usage

The htmlspecialchars() function converts some predefined characters to HTML entities.

The predefined characters are:

• & (ampersand) becomes &
• " (double quote) becomes "
• ' (single quote) becomes '
• < (less than) becomes <
• > (greater than) becomes >

Tip: To convert special HTML entities back to characters, use the htmlspecialchars_decode() function.

Syntax

htmlspecialchars(string,flags,character-set,double_encode)

Parameter Values

Technical Details

More Examples

Example

Convert some predefined characters to HTML entities:

$str = "Jane & 'Tarzan'";
echo htmlspecialchars($str, ENT_COMPAT); // Will only convert double quotes
echo "
";
echo htmlspecialchars($str, ENT_QUOTES); // Converts double and single quotes
echo "
";
echo htmlspecialchars($str, ENT_NOQUOTES); // Does not convert any quotes
?>

The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source):

Jane & 'Tarzan'

Jane & 'Tarzan'

Jane & 'Tarzan'

The browser output of the code above will be:

Jane & 'Tarzan'
Jane & 'Tarzan'
Jane & 'Tarzan'

Try it Yourself »

Example

Convert double quotes to HTML entities:

$str = 'I love "PHP".';
echo htmlspecialchars($str, ENT_QUOTES); // Converts double and single quotes
?>

The HTML output of the code above will be (View Source):

I love "PHP".

The browser output of the code above will be:

I love "PHP".

Try it Yourself »

❮ PHP String Reference

How do I allow special characters in PHP?

What does Htmlspecialchars mean in PHP?

What is the difference between Htmlentities and Htmlspecialchars in PHP?

Can UTF 8 handle special characters?