Remove HTML Encoded characters

Question

I'm getting some data from the database and it has HTML Encoded chars ( ). What options are there for removing these?

I don't want these rendered at all...I want them stripped from the data.

At the moment I'm not worried about the HTML tags...just the encoded characters.

EDIT: If it's relevant these chars are causing some errors in JSON validation.

How are you outputting the JSON? It seems to me like a JSON library should be able to easily handle the encoding/decoding of HTML encoded characters. — Horus
– Horus, Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 22:11
@ErikPhilips not really they are needed in certain places, but in a datatable.net table they are causing issues. — Jared
– Jared, Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 22:26

Jan Schejbal · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-01 22:12:37Z

1

If you want to get rid of them, obtain a list of such characters or a RegExp matching them all (something like &[a-z]+;) and do a search-and replace.

However, if you only want them gone due to errors in JSON validation, you should correctly generated/encode your JSON to avoid the errors. (However, I don't really understand how they can cause invalid JSON.)

answered Jan 1, 2013 at 22:12

Jan Schejbal

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2 Comments

Jared Over a year ago

Whenever it's getting encoded/used by datatables.net it's causing the validation issue (I believe). Parse error on line 8: ...ado", ""BeginAllYourAdventur ----------------------^ Expecting '}', ':', ',', ']'

Jan Schejbal Over a year ago

Somehow, a quote character " got in there, ending the string and messing up the JSON. & and ; have no special meaning in JSON, " does. I'd suggest you create a minimal example demonstrating the full issue (including the generated JSON), as I believe it does not have much to do with HTML entities in general.

yan · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-01 22:35:10Z

0

Simply trimming by regexp should not be an option here. For example   can be coded as   as well, but &\#[0-9]+; regex would lead to data loss, since almost every char can become encoded like that at some point (ex.:<p>HELLO</p>).

answered Jan 1, 2013 at 22:35

yan

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