How to escape HTML characters in PHP?

htmlentities ( string $string [, int $flags = ENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401 [, string $encoding = ini_get("default_charset") [, bool $double_encode = true ]]] ) : string

<?php
$str = "A &#39;quote&#39; is <b>bold</b>";

// 输出: A &#39;quote&#39; is &lt;b&gt;bold&lt;/b&gt;
echo htmlentities($str);

// 输出: A &#039;quote&#039; is &lt;b&gt;bold&lt;/b&gt;
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_QUOTES);
?>

<?php
$str = "\x8F!!!";

// 输出空 string
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8");

// 输出 "!!!"
echo htmlentities($str, ENT_QUOTES | ENT_IGNORE, "UTF-8");
?>