Re: [NEWBIE] How to allow for <a href> tags but no others?

Dave wrote:

PHP General,

...

4. What I've Done So Far: I've looked into the *htmlspecialchars()* <http://jp.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php> and *htmlentities(), thinking that they perhaps could pull out characters used in tags, but they seem to be more for formatting script, not filtering it.* <http://jp.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php>

these functions can help you as part of the solution to your problem. your in the right ballpark :-)

I'm assuming I need a string_replace() code of some kind. But I'm

php has str_replace(), it pretty much does what it says on the tin.

lost as to how to specify to allow "<" only when immediately followed by either "a href =" or "/a>" and accept no other instances. It was when I realized that people might potentially be able to insert some Java Script inside of the quotes after "href=" that I realized I was in over my head.

take a look at strip_tags(), right up your alley. an alternative is to use regular expressions to find/replace the links and strip out other stuff... but that probably be a multi-step process (you would be doing basic parsing of the input) and maybe a little complex for you atm.

Any help much appreciated. ** <http://jp.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php>