How to strip tags in a safer way than using strip_tags function?

Question

I\'m having some problems using strip_tags PHP function when the string contains \'less than\' and \'greater than\' signs. For example:

If I do:

stri         


        

Answer 1

As a wacky workaround you could filter non-html brackets with:

$html = preg_replace("# <(?![/a-z]) | (?<=\s)>(?![a-z]) #exi", "htmlentities('$0')", $html);

Apply strip_tags() afterwards. Note how this only works for your specific example and similar cases. It's a regular expression with some heuristics, not artificial intellegince to discern html tags from unescaped angle brackets with other meaning.

Answer 2

If you want to have "greater than" and "lesser than" signs, you need to escape them:

> is >

< is <

See e.g. this: http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_entities.asp

Answer 3

Instead of strip_tags(), just use htmlspecialchars() instead.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php