PHP FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING Filter

Example

Remove all HTML tags from a string:

<?php
$str = "<h1>Hello World!</h1>";

$newstr = filter_var($str, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
echo $newstr;
?>

Definition and Usage

The FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING filter removes tags and remove or encode special characters from a string.

The FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING filter was deprecated in PHP 8.1.0. Use htmlspecialchars() to encode special characters, or strip_tags() to remove HTML tags.

Possible options and flags:

FILTER_FLAG_NO_ENCODE_QUOTES - Do not encode quotes
FILTER_FLAG_STRIP_LOW - Remove characters with ASCII value < 32
FILTER_FLAG_STRIP_HIGH - Remove characters with ASCII value > 127
FILTER_FLAG_ENCODE_LOW - Encode characters with ASCII value < 32
FILTER_FLAG_ENCODE_HIGH - Encode characters with ASCII value > 127
FILTER_FLAG_ENCODE_AMP - Encode the "&" character to &

More Examples

Example 1

Remove all HTML tags and all characters with ASCII value > 127, from a string:

<?php
$str = "<h1>Hello WorldÆØÅ!</h1>";

$newstr = filter_var($str, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING, FILTER_FLAG_STRIP_HIGH);
echo $newstr;
?>

Try it Yourself »

❮ PHP Filter Reference