How to display HTML tags as plain text [duplicate]

Answer 1

you may use htmlspecialchars()

<?php
$new = htmlspecialchars("<a href='test'>Test</a>", ENT_QUOTES);
echo $new; // &lt;a href=&#039;test&#039;&gt;Test&lt;/a&gt;
?>

Answer 2

You should use htmlspecialchars. It replaces characters as below:

• '&' (ampersand) becomes &
• '"' (double quote) becomes " when ENT_NOQUOTES is not set.
• "'" (single quote) becomes ' only when ENT_QUOTES is set.
• '<' (less than) becomes <
• '>' (greater than) becomes >

Answer 3

There is another way...

header('Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8');

This makes the whole page served as plain text... better is htmlspecialchars...

Hope this helps...

Answer 4

To display HTML tags within a browser, surround the output with < xmp> and < / xmp> tags

Answer 5

You can use htmlentities when echoing to the browser, this will show the tag rather than have html interpret it.

See here http://uk3.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php

Example:

 echo htmlentities("<strong>Look just like this line - so then know how to type it</strong>"); 

Output:

<strong>Look just like this line - so then know how to type it</strong>