Get character count of a string saved in database – html_entity_decode not working

23rd September 2022

Php - Strings

As you can see the saved string has html code within, and when the html_entity_decode is performed upon the string this is being included within the character count.

With a slight adjustment to the code by adding – ENT_QUOTES,”UTF-8″ we get the correct amount of characters within the string as seem by a webpage after decode.


echo $string1 = html_entity_decode("We&#039;re the smartest SEO Agency. We love SEO, so let&#039;s grab a coffee & find out how we can make you shine in search with our SEO!");
echo "<br>";

echo strlen($string1);


echo "<br>";

echo $string2 = html_entity_decode("We&#039;re the smartest SEO Agency. We love SEO, so let&#039;s grab a coffee & find out how we can make you shine in search with our SEO!",ENT_QUOTES,"UTF-8");
echo "<br>";

echo strlen($string2);

echo $string1 = html_entity_decode("We're the smartest SEO Agency. We love SEO, so let's grab a coffee & find out how we can make you shine in search with our SEO!");

echo "<br>";

echo strlen($string1);

echo "<br>";

echo $string2 = html_entity_decode("We're the smartest SEO Agency. We love SEO, so let's grab a coffee & find out how we can make you shine in search with our SEO!",ENT_QUOTES,"UTF-8");

echo "<br>";

echo strlen($string2);