What is the role of htmlentities in encoding characters in PHP, and how does it interact with UTF-8 encoding?
htmlentities in PHP is used to encode special characters in a string to their corresponding HTML entities. When working with UTF-8 encoding, htmlentities can help prevent characters from being misinterpreted or causing display issues on a webpage. By using htmlentities with UTF-8 encoding, you can ensure that special characters are properly displayed and processed.
// Example of using htmlentities with UTF-8 encoding
$string = "Café & Bar";
$encoded_string = htmlentities($string, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
echo $encoded_string; // Output: Café & Bar