What methods can be employed in PHP to convert HTML entities back to their original special characters for consistent data representation?

When working with data that contains HTML entities in PHP, it's important to convert these entities back to their original special characters for consistent data representation. This can be achieved using the htmlspecialchars_decode() function in PHP, which will decode HTML entities back to their original characters. By utilizing this function, you can ensure that your data is displayed accurately and consistently across your application.

$html_entity = "<div>Hello, &world&!</div>";
$decoded_string = htmlspecialchars_decode($html_entity);
echo $decoded_string;