How to remove htmlentities() values from the database?

Question

Long before I knew anything - not that I know much even now - I desgined a web app in php which inserted data in my mysql database after running the values through htmlent

Answer 1

I ended up using this, not pretty, but I'm tired, it's 2am and it did its job! (Edit: on test data)

$tables = array('users', 'users_more', 'users_extra', 'forum_posts', 'posts_edits', 'forum_threads', 'orders', 'product_comments', 'products', 'favourites', 'blocked', 'notes');
foreach($tables as $table)
    {       
        $sql = "SELECT * FROM {$table} WHERE data_date_ts < '{$encode_cutoff}'";
        $rows = $database->query($sql);
        while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($rows))
            {
                $new = array();
                foreach($row as $key => $data)
                    {
                        $new[$key] = $database->escape_value(html_entity_decode($data, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'));
                    }
                array_shift($new);
                $new_string = "";
                $i = 0;
                foreach($new as $new_key => $new_data)
                    {
                        if($i > 0) { $new_string.= ", "; }
                        $new_string.= $new_key . "='" . $new_data . "'";
                        $i++;
                    }
                $sql = "UPDATE {$table} SET " . $new_string . " WHERE id='" . $row['id'] . "'";
                $database->query($sql);
                // plus some code to check that all out
            }
    }