cannot get html special chars from url - php

Question

I'm very new to php and can't find answer to my issue.
I try to echo a string with special characters (ie. à,é) from the URL.
URL string:
preview.php?content=<p>blà é bla</p>
Expected echoed result: blà é bla
So I do this:
$cont = $_GET['content'];
echo $cont;
Result:
bl
So, even if my page has a <meta charset="UTF-8">, I tried:
$cont = $_GET['content'];
$cont = html_entity_decode($cont, ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8');
echo $cont;
Same result:
bl
I tried with a header (header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');) at top of the page with same result.
What's weird is that is I try this:
echo html_entity_decode("<p>blà é bla</p>");
or even this:
echo "<p>blà é bla</p>";
I get the expected result:
blà é bla
So, I don't think it's a charset issue but can't understand why it works with the literal string but not with the get variable, can someone help me?

Answer 1

Encode your URL with: urlencode and htmlentities for example:
$url = 'content=' . urlencode('content=<p>blà é bla</p>');
echo '<a href="preview.php?' . htmlentities($url) . '">';

Answer 2

#JustOnUnderMillions, is correct.
E.g:
If you try to access data from URL like
http://localhost/index.php?content=%3Cp%3Eblà%20é%20bla%3C/p%3E
echo $_GET['content'];
OUTPUT: bl
But when you pass data by encoding data like
http://localhost/index.php?content=%3Cp%3Ebl%26agrave%3B%20%26eacute%3B%20bla%3C%2Fp%3E
echo $_GET['content'];
OUTPUT: blà é bla
It is better to use urlecode function for encode data in URL.

Answer 3

Thanks all.
This works perfectly !
Actualy, as my URL is generated with javascript, I did a encodeURIComponent on my link's href variable and it works as well.

Answer 4

If you want to pass a URL with parameters as a value in a URL and through a javascript function, such as.
Pass the URL value through the PHP urlencode() function twice, like this
<?php
$url = "index.php?id=4&pg=2";
$url = urlencode(urlencode($url));
echo "<a href=\"javascript:openWin('page.php?url=$url');\">";
?>
On the page being opened by the javascript function (page.php), you only need to urldecode() once, because when javascript 'touches' the URL that passes through it, it decodes the URL once itself. So, just decode it once more in your PHP script to fully undo the double-encoding.
<?php
$url = urldecode($_GET['url']);
?>
If you don't do this, you'll find that the result URL value in the target script is missing all the var=values following ? question mark.
index.php?id=4
kindly check this online tool also : URL Encode , URL Decode