How to convert UTF8 characters to numeric character entities in PHP

Question

Is a translation of the below code at all possible using PHP?

The code below is written in JavaScript. It returns html with numeric character references where needed. Ex

Answer 1

Use mb_encode_numericentity:

$convmap = array(0x80, 0xffff, 0, 0xffff);
echo mb_encode_numericentity($utf8Str, $convmap, 'UTF-8');