How should I echo a PHP string variable that contains special characters?

Question

I\'m trying to populate a form with some data that contains special characters (e.g. single quote, double quote,<,>,?,\",\"\".~,,!@#$%^&*()_+}{\":?<<>,./;\'[.]

Answer 1

If you want to display it

echo htmlspecialchars($messge, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');

That's what I usually do.

Since the answers are difference:

htmlentities-vs-htmlspecialchars is worth checking out.

Answer 2

whats wrong with using a constant ?

<?php
define(foo,'<,>,?,","".~,,!@#$%^&*()_+}{":?<<>,./;');
$foo2="'[.]";
echo constant('foo').$foo2;
?>

you need to put the '[.]' into a variable, as a constant will break on a ' (single quote).

Answer 3

I normally use the following code, see htmlspecialchars

<?php echo htmlspecialchars($videoId, ENT_QUOTES | ENT_HTML5); ?>

Answer 4

This will prevent your tags from being broken by the echo:

<?php echo htmlentities($message); ?>