SYNOPSIS

use HTML::Entities;

my $enc = encode_entities('fish & chips');
print "$enc\n"; # fish & chips

my $dec = decode_entities($enc);
print "$dec\n"; # fish & chips

DESCRIPTION

This is a drop-in replacement for HTML::Entities, providing the character entities defined in HTML5. Some caveats:

• The implementation is pure perl, hence in some cases slower, especially decoding.
• It will not work in Perl < 5.8.1.

Functions

"decode_entities($string, ...)"

This routine replaces HTML entities found in the $string with the corresponding Unicode character. If multiple strings are provided as arguments they are each decoded separately and the same number of strings are returned.

If called in void context the arguments are decoded in-place.

This routine is exported by default.

"_decode_entities($string, \%entity2char)"

"_decode_entities($string, \%entity2char, $expand_prefix)"

This will in-place replace HTML entities in $string. The %entity2char hash must be provided. Named entities not found in the %entity2char hash are left alone. Numeric entities are always expanded.

If $expand_prefix is TRUE then entities without trailing ``;'' in %entity2char will even be expanded as a prefix of a longer unrecognized name.

 $string = "foo&nbspbar";
 _decode_entities($string, { nb => "@", nbsp => "\xA0" }, 1);
 print $string;  # will print "foo bar"

This routine is exported by default.

"encode_entities($string)"

"encode_entities($string, $unsafe_chars)"

This routine replaces unsafe characters in $string with their entity representation. A second argument can be given to specify which characters to consider unsafe (i.e., which to escape). This may be a regular expression.

If called in void context the string is encoded in-place.

This routine is exported by default.

"encode_entities_numeric($string)"

This routine works just like encode_entities, except that the replacement entities are always numeric.

This routine is not exported by default.

"num_entity($string)"

Given a single character string, encodes it as a numeric entity.

This routine is not exported by default.

The following functions cannot be exported. They behave the same as the exportable functions.

"HTML::Entities::decode($string, ...)"

"HTML::Entities::encode($string)"

"HTML::Entities::encode($string, $unsafe_characters)"

"HTML::Entities::encode_numeric($string)"

"HTML::Entities::encode_numeric($string, $unsafe_characters)"

"HTML::Entities::encode_numerically($string)"

"HTML::Entities::encode_numerically($string, $unsafe_characters)"

Variables

$HTML::HTML5::Entities::hex

This variable controls whether numeric entities will use hexadecimal or decimal notation. It is TRUE (hexadecimal) by default, but can be set to FALSE.

It only affects the encoding functions. Decoding always understands both notations.

%HTML::HTML5::Entities::char2entity

%HTML::HTML5::Entities::entity2char

There contain the mapping from all characters to the corresponding entities (and vice versa, respectively). These variables may be exported.

Note that %char2entity is a more conservative set of mappings, intended to be safe for serialising strings to HTML4, HTML5 and XHTML 1.x. And for hysterical raisins, %entity2char does not include the leading ampersands, while %char2entity does.

AUTHOR

Toby Inkster <[email protected]>.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Encoding and Decoding Functions

Copyright (c) 1995-2006 by Gisle Aas.

Copyright (c) 2012 by Toby Inkster.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

Entity Tables

Copyright (c) 2004-2007 by Apple Computer Inc, Mozilla Foundation, and Opera Software ASA.

Copyright (c) 2007-2011 by Wakaba <[email protected]>.

Copyright (c) 2009-2012 by Toby Inkster <[email protected]>.

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES

THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.