Question

I send json_encoded data from my PHP server to iPhone app. Strings containing html entities, like '&' are escaped by json_encode and sent as &.

I am looking to do one of two things:

• make json_encode not escape html entities. Doc says ‘normal’ mode shouldn’t escape it but it doesn’t work for me. Any ideas?

• make the iPhone app un-escape html entities cheaply. The only way I can think of doing it now involves spinning up a XML/HTML parser which is very expensive. Any cheaper suggestions?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Neither PHP 5.3 nor PHP 5.2 touch the HTML entities.

You can test this with the following code:

<?php
header("Content-type: text/plain"); //makes sure entities are not interpreted
$s = 'A string with &amp; &#x6F8 entities';
echo json_encode($s);

You’ll see the only thing PHP does is to add double quotes around the string.