html_entity_decode problem in PHP?

Question

I am trying to convert HTML entities from a source string to their literal character equivalent.

For example:

<?php

$string = "Hello &#8211; World";
$converted = html_entity_decode($string);

?>

Whilst this rightly converts the entity on screen, when I look at the HTML code it is still showing the explicit entity. I need to change that so that it literally converts the entity as I am not using the string within an HTML page.

Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

FYI I am sending the converted string to Apple's Push notification service:

$payload['aps'] = array('alert' => $converted, 'badge' => 1, 'sound' => 'default');
$payload = json_encode($payload);

Answer 1

– maps to a UTF-8 character (the em dash) so you need to specify UTF-8 as the character encoding:

$converted = html_entity_decode($string, ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8');