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POHandling HTML entities in contenteditable divs
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copied!<p>I am using a contenteditable <code><div></code> to edit an e-mail message (specifically, with <a href="http://nicedit.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">NicEdit</a>). I want to be able to submit the message body in a form, process it with PHP, and send it using the <code>mail()</code> function (or <a href="http://code.google.com/a/apache-extras.org/p/phpmailer/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">PHPMailer</a>).</p> <p>The problem I'm having is to do with special characters and encoding. When a special character such as <code>π</code> or <code>á</code> is typed into the div, it remains unchanged instead of being converted to an html entity like <code>&pi;</code> or <code>&aacute;</code>. There are some cases where it is converted, like <code><</code> to <code>&lt;</code>.</p> <p>So when the form is submitted, the data received by PHP is difficult to handle. Writing</p> <pre><code>pi is "less than" 2 × pi: π < 2π </code></pre> <p>puts the following data in the contenteditable div</p> <pre><code><div>pi is "less than" 2 × pi:</div> <div>π < 2π</div> </code></pre> <p>and this is what is received by PHP. But using <code>htmlentities()</code> gives</p> <pre><code>&lt;div&gt;pi is &quot;less than&quot; 2 &times; pi:&lt;/div&gt; &lt;div&gt;&pi; &lt; 2&pi;&lt;/div&gt; </code></pre> <p>which is correct except for the HTML tags, so this method appears to be useless. The originally received data is fine for inserting into a database (I think), but when I attempt to send it as an e-mail the encoding messes up.</p> <p>From my point of view it seems like the solution is to encode the entities that are outside of HTML tags to get something like this:</p> <pre><code><div>pi is &quot;less than&quot; 2 &times; pi:</div> <div>&pi; &lt; 2&pi;</div> </code></pre> <p>but from searching on Google and StackOverflow this seems to be a bad thing to do. So I think I must be doing something wrong with the encoding at some point, whether that's just before sending the e-mail or back with the original contenteditable data. I'm looking for a solution that works, ideally without some complicated library like HTMLPurifier.</p> <p>Any ideas?</p> <p><strong>EDIT:</strong> I have tried <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1364933/htmlentities-in-php-but-preserving-html-tags/10277635#10277635">this solution</a> to convert special characters to html entities when they are not in tags. This seems to work well when I try typing in special characters like <code>π</code>. But the answer from that link has been voted down and <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/6332363/870965">a similar answer</a> says the approach is fundamentally wrong. Can anyone tell me why this is, and why I shouldn't stick with <code>htmlentitiesOutsideHTMLTags</code>? </p>

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