How to get &curren to display literally, not as an HTML entity

Question

I'm using php to look at an XML file that has a URL in it. The URLs look something like this:

https://site.com/bacon_report?Id=1&report=1&currentDimension=2&param=1

When I echo out the URLs, the "&curren" shows up as "¤" (AKA #164, A4 or currency symbol) and the links don't work. This happens even though there isn't a closing semicolon for it. What is the cleanest way to make "&curren" display literally?

You are creating a URL; there are rules you have to follow (url-encoding). — Jon
– Jon, Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 22:43

Kolja · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-30 20:04:33Z

10

Funny enough I ran into the same problem just now and I found this answer. However, I found another solution which might even be better!

Simply put the variable at the beginning of your query string, and you will avoid the &curren completely.

Do:

https://site.com/bacon_report?currentDimension=2&Id=1&report=1&param=1

instead of:

https://site.com/bacon_report?Id=1&report=1&currentDimension=2&param=1

answered Oct 30, 2013 at 20:04

Kolja

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Gavin · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-29 22:34:45Z

9

Use the php function urlencode:

urlencode("https://site.com/bacon_report?Id=1&report=1&currentDimension=2&param=1"

will output

https%3A%2F%2Fsite.com%2Fbacon_report%3FId%3D1%26report%3D1%26currentDimension%3D2%26param%3D1

answered Oct 29, 2013 at 22:34

Gavin

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1 Comment

Adam Over a year ago

The link doesnt work anymore if I urlencode the comple url. Its also mentioned here webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/5509/… that one should not do this.

Trondster · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-05 14:34:10Z

6

The problem here is escaping - you need to escape the "&" characters. In XML all special characters like <, >, ', " and & should be escaped.

Escape it properly as

https://example.com/bacon_report?Id=1&amp;report=1&amp;currentDimension=2&amp;param=1

..just like in HTML:

<a href="https://example.com/bacon_report?Id=1&report=1&currentDimension=2&param=1">WRONG - no escaping</a>
<a href="https://example.com/bacon_report?Id=1&amp;report=1&amp;currentDimension=2&amp;param=1">CORRECT - correct escape sequence</a>

So - the cleanest way to show "&curren" in HTML/XML is to properly escape the ampersand, and render it as "&curren".

answered Feb 5, 2015 at 14:34

Trondster

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1 Comment

mickmackusa Over a year ago

You haven't demonstrated how to programmatically achieve this solution.

Philip F · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-23 17:02:33Z

0

I think that in this case it is best to use htmlentities because with urlencode you get https%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%2Fbacon_report%3FId%3D1%26report%3D1%26currentDimension%3D2%26param%3D1

and when applying urldecode, you will still have the &curren symbol where as with htmlentities the url comes out clean.
https://example.com/bacon_report?Id=1&report=1&currentDimension=2&param=1

edited Dec 23, 2016 at 17:02

answered Dec 23, 2016 at 16:06

Philip F

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coliff · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-04 08:11:07Z

0

I came across this issue while working on technical documentation (in Markdown which gets converted to HTML).

To solve the issue I used a zero-width space character which I copied and pasted from between these brackets (). That way it appears that there is no space and can include the below without any issues: /search?query=1&currentLonLat=-74.600291,40.360869

answered Dec 4, 2019 at 8:11

coliff

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1 Comment

Trondster Over a year ago

Adding a zero-width character may look ok, but may screw up the clickable link - then you may in effect change the parameter "currentLonLat" to "%e2%80%8bcurrentLonLat", where "e2%80%8b" is the correctly url encoded zero-width space character. A better solution would be to correctly encode the special characters, just like in your link /search?query=1&currentLonLat=-74.600291,40.360869 ...where if you look at the HTML source code it will be encoded as /search?query=1&currentLonLat=-74.600291,40.360869, with the ampersand "&" correctly escaped to "&".

mickmackusa · Accepted Answer · 2024-10-20 22:44:36Z

This canoncial page needs someone to say "use http_build_query()" like several of the signpost dupes demonstrate.

Don't manually create query strings. Have a native PHP solution properly, reliably encode it for you.

If you need to parse your input strings as URL before encoding only the querystring of the URL, do that.

$params = [
    'Id' => 1,
    'report' => 1,
    'currentDimension' => 2,
    'param' => 1,
];

echo 'https://example.com/bacon_report?' . http_build_query($params);

If you are actually building HTML links, then:

$url = 'https://example.com/bacon_report';
$queryString = http_build_query([
    'Id' => 1,
    'report' => 1,
    'currentDimension' => 2,
    'param' => 1,
]);
printf(
    '<a href="%s?%s">%s</a>',
    $url
    $queryString,
    htmlentities("$url?$queryString")
);

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