how to convert these things back to raw text? - php

Question

i use curl to fetch a page's source, it works great but not the inside html, it's returned with something like this :
the html look like this : t i & # 7 8 7 1; t, #&&#%$^%, etc....
yes, i really want to convert it to normal text, i try php decode functions but there's no luck at all
Thank you
##################3
edit :
thank you sirs,i tried
$fixed_result = html_entity_decode($result, ENT_COMPAT, "UTF-8");
and it works like a charm, but there are some character become "�", as this :
" S�C KH�CH"
i have no idea what is this
thank you sirs

Answer 1

That appears to be HTML entity encoded, you should be able to revert to the normal characters using html_entity_decode with the appropriate character set specified. e.g.:
$fixed_result = html_entity_decode($result, ENT_COMPAT, "UTF-8");

Answer 2

As per ajreal's comment check the manual for html_entity_decode and try the fallback solution:
// For users prior to PHP 4.3.0 you may do this:
function unhtmlentities($string)
{
// replace numeric entities
$string = preg_replace('~&#x([0-9a-f]+);~ei', 'chr(hexdec("\\1"))', $string);
$string = preg_replace('~&#([0-9]+);~e', 'chr("\\1")', $string);
// replace literal entities
$trans_tbl = get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES);
$trans_tbl = array_flip($trans_tbl);
return strtr($string, $trans_tbl);
}
$c = unhtmlentities($a);
(edit) For multi-byte support try the following version, taken from the PHP comments page,
function unhtmlentities($string)
{
// replace numeric entities
$string = preg_replace('~&#x([0-9a-f]+);~ei', 'code2utf(hexdec("\\1"))', $string);
$string = preg_replace('~&#([0-9]+);~e', 'code2utf("\\1")', $string);
// replace literal entities
$trans_tbl = get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES);
$trans_tbl = array_flip($trans_tbl);
return strtr($string, $trans_tbl);
}
// Returns the utf string corresponding to the unicode value (from php.net, courtesy - romans#void.lv)
function code2utf($num)
{
if ($num < 128) return chr($num);
if ($num < 2048) return chr(($num >> 6) + 192) . chr(($num & 63) + 128);
if ($num < 65536) return chr(($num >> 12) + 224) . chr((($num >> 6) & 63) + 128) . chr(($num & 63) + 128);
if ($num < 2097152) return chr(($num >> 18) + 240) . chr((($num >> 12) & 63) + 128) . chr((($num >> 6) & 63) + 128) . chr(($num & 63) + 128);
return '';
}
$c = unhtmlentities($a);