What is the difference between htmlentities() and htmlspecialchars() in PHP?

The main difference between htmlentities() and htmlspecialchars() in PHP is how they handle characters like quotes and ampersands. htmlentities() converts all applicable characters to HTML entities, while htmlspecialchars() only converts characters that are special in HTML, such as <, >, ", ', and &. If you want to encode all characters, including those that are not special in HTML, you should use htmlentities(). If you only want to encode special characters in HTML, use htmlspecialchars().

// Using htmlentities()
$encoded_string = htmlentities($original_string);

// Using htmlspecialchars()
$encoded_string = htmlspecialchars($original_string);