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PHP Building Websites with PHP Contact Form & Sending Email Sanitizing Form Data

Posted by Natalia Semenyaka
Natalia Semenyaka
Courses Plus Student 482 Points

Can we use FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS instead of FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING for $msg?

Hello guys! Before taking this course, i have already been to Building Basic Website with Alena Hooligan(soory, if it is wrong-typed) and there she gave an advice to use FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS for <textarea> in order to prevent any kind of mischievous user input? How do you think is it more correct to use FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS instead of FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING? Thanks for help!

1 Answer

Seth Kroger
Seth Kroger
56,413 Points
Seth Kroger
Seth Kroger
56,413 Points

The difference in FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS and FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING is that they will treat embedded HTML in the input differently. FILTER_SANITIZE_SPECIAL_CHARS will leave the tags in place but turn the <> characters into &lt; and &gt;. FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING will strip the tags out leaving the just text inside the tags.