print the contents of PHP variable as text string in HTML

Question

in a wordpress php script, I have the following:

echo \'
\' . $slide_media . 
     \'
\' . \         


        

Answer 1

If you're outputting raw HTML to a HTML document (and you want it shown as <b>text</b> instead of text), you can use htmlentities($string):

htmlentities($slide_media);

If your string is UTF8, you might have to specify this (if your PHP version is 5.4+, you don't have to specify UTF-8, as it's default):

htmlentities($slide_media, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8");

You can also strip all HTML tags from the variable by using strip_tags($string):

strip_tags($slide_media);

Answer 2

<?php print_r($slide_media); ?> 

should do the trick for you.

Answer 3

To see what is within a variable (maybe it is in array, an object or something else) use print_r($slide_media); or var_dump($slide_media);

Answer 4

print_r Prints human-readable information about a variable

Answer 5

I would do:

echo '<pre>' . var_export($slide_media, true) . '</pre>';

Or maybe

echo '<pre>' . var_export(array_map('htmlentities', $slide_media), true) . '</pre>';

If $slidemedia is an array with html content.