How to remove html encoded in mysql data?

[vijesharora16]

When I give a space in form and submit it into the database, I found the data has written with html encoded words which is actually a white space.

http://image.prntscr.com/image/f4232147a35240aabfe957fb0f27ba13.png

[droopsnoot]

Can’t really help without seeing the code relevant to displaying the form, connecting to the database and storing the data.

[vijesharora16]

else if(isset($_POST['description']) && isset($_POST['id'])){
    $description = trim($_POST['description']);
    $id = $_POST['id'];

    try{
        $createQuery = "UPDATE taskslists SET description = :desc
                        WHERE id = :id";
        
        $statement = $conn->prepare($createQuery);
        $statement->execute(array(":desc" => $description, ":id" => $id));

        if($statement){
            echo "Task description updated";
        }

    }catch(PDOException $ex){
        echo 'An error has occured ' . $ex->getMessage();
    }
}

[Mittineague]

Are you sure it’s an “html encoded” problem?

Seeing Ä Ä Ä makes me suspect it’s more likely a character set mismatch issue.

[vijesharora16]

Seems like the problem was solved by adding the “charset=utf8” in PDO define constant, now it is no longer showing that html encoded characters in the table. HOWEVER, how can I remove the space from the database table and in the form field, even I have given the trim(), you can see the 2nd line of the above code in the description code.

I think I have to give add trim too in UPDATE query but where?

[Mittineague]

trim works for only the beginning and end of strings. If there are multiple spaces within the string that you want to replace with single spaces I think passing the strings through str_replace would work. eg.

str_replace('  ', ' ', $string)