Weird Behavion When Retrieving A String From A Text Field

[p3ndu]

Hi guys,

 

I am creating a script that retrieves some products from an OpenCart database. Everything is fine except one of the fields that gets a description surrounded by paragraph tags from a TEXT column in one of the tables.

 

The weird behavior is that no matter what I do with the string, I can't strip the tags from it ( I tried using strip_tags, str_replace, preg_replace and everything else I could have thought! ).

 

The PHP version is :5.2.17

MySQL Client API version 5.1.65

 

The code I use to retrieve that certain string is :

$query_desc = mysql_query("SELECT description FROM product_description WHERE product_id = $id_produs AND language_id = 2");
while($row_desc = mysql_fetch_assoc($query_desc)) {
// $desc = preg_replace("/<[^>]*>/","",$row_desc['description']);
// $desc = var_dump($desc);
$desc = $row_desc['description'];
}

 

If I copy the output of $desc from the browser, save it in a PHP file and remove the tags using any of the methods mentioned above, it works! Also, var_dump tells me it's a string and everything seems ok.

 

Has anyone encountered such weird behavior before?

[Jessica]

What's the output of the var_dump?

 

If the <p> tags are showing up on your page, rather than in the source, then the text has already been run through htmlentities. Try doing html_entity_decode on it before removing it.

 

Otherwise, show us exactly what you see.

 

Also, that code doesn't echo anything. Show us the code that echo's the string.

[p3ndu]

Wow! That was fast and GREAT. The html_entity_decode() worked, it is now doing it's job!

 

Thank you so very much, sir!

[Jessica]

You're welcome ma'am.

 

You should find the source of where the tags are being converted to entities and fix it there, FYI.

[p3ndu]

Thanks ma'am. Noticed you're not a sir after I got the code to work, was overexcited!

 

The problem with the entities is called OpenCart and the fact that the former "developer" migrated everything from Wordpress to it leaving a total mess. And I know have to fix it.

 

Thank you so very much again!

[Jessica]

In that case, you'll want to fix the database entries, but if you're happy with it I guess it's not a huge deal. *shrug*.

 

You're welcome.

[p3ndu]

It is a huge deal. But at first I had to get some basic functionality on the site, and with time I will clean the database and set everything right.