How to use echo as an output with HTML format

Question

I need to print an error which contain html format which in my case is <strong>. here's my code that i want to produce the output

if (empty($namabelakang)){
        $errors[] = "<strong>Nama Belakang</strong> tidak boleh kosong";
    }

and here's the one which i use to print:

foreach($errors as $error){
        echo clean($error)."<br>";
    }

It's not print as i'm expecting, it print

<strong>Nama Belakang</strong> tidak boleh kosong

Rather than:

Nama Belakang tidak boleh kosong

Please help me how can I fix it? here's the code for clean function:

function clean($data) {
    $data = trim($data);
    $data = stripslashes($data);
    $data = htmlspecialchars($data);
    return $data;
}

Answer 1

If you want it to print as actual HTML, then you shouldn't use htmlspecialchars(). That function will convert it to character codes that will prevent it from rendering as actual HTML.

function clean($data) {
  $data = trim($data);
  $data = stripslashes($data);
  $data = htmlspecialchars($data);
  return $data;
}

$str = "<strong>Nama Belakang</strong> tidak boleh kosong";
echo clean($str);

// prints out "&lt;strong&gt;Nama Belakang&lt;/strong&gt; tidak boleh kosong"

What you want is to print the actual HTML. htmlspecialchars() will convert any special characters in the string to its associated ASCII character code.

In terms of security, there isn't much of a risk when printing HTML. What's the worst that could happen? You could remove script tags beforehand, that should prevent any malicious intent.

Answer 2

foreach($errors as $error){
        echo htmlspecialchars($error)."<br>";
    }

Documentation

Answer 3

Dont use the clean function....

just echo like:

foreach($errors as $error){
    echo $error . "<br>";
}

there are no other functions needed.

Of course you could add the trim() like echo trim($error) so there would be no whitespaces on beginning and end.

All other functions like htmlspecialchars or stripslashes will transform your string to plain text and wont let show you the html result :)

Answer 4

   function clean($data) {
    $data = trim($data);
    $data = stripslashes($data);
    $data = htmlspecialchars($data);
    $data = str_replace(array("&lt;strong&gt;", "&lt;/strong&gt;"), array("<strong>", "</strong>"), $data);
    return $data;
}

Answer 5

Easy way to solve this problem is putting $error inside "" like so:

foreach($errors as $error){
    echo "$error <br>";
}