Are rawurlencode and htmlentities equally secure in PHP, and when should each be recommended?

Rawurlencode and htmlentities serve different purposes in PHP. Rawurlencode is used to encode a URL string, making it safe for use in a URL, while htmlentities is used to encode special characters in a string, making it safe to display in an HTML context. If you need to encode a URL string, rawurlencode is the appropriate choice. If you need to encode special characters in a string to prevent XSS attacks when displaying user input in an HTML context, htmlentities should be used. 

// Using rawurlencode to encode a URL string
$url = "https://www.example.com/page.php?name=" . rawurlencode($name);

// Using htmlentities to encode special characters in a string
$user_input = "<script>alert('XSS attack!');</script>";
$encoded_input = htmlentities($user_input, ENT_QUOTES);
echo $encoded_input;

Keywords

rawurlencode htmlentities security PHP recommendation

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