[plug] Stripping out Markups in SQL

[Lyndon Kroker]

You may want to consider the use of PHP as there is a custom function for 
this.  PHP can be imbedded into the text of an html document if required.

The function is called strip_tags(). Here is an example:

$string = strip_tags($string, '<a><b><i><u>');

The tags supplied in the second argument are the _allowable_ tags, and you 
can enter whatever tags you want to allow.

<?php

$query = "SELECT myhtmlstuff FROM mytable";
$result = mysql_query($query) or
    die (mysql_error());
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);

$my_html = $row[myhtmlstuff];

// allow bold, undreline and italic
$stripped_html = strip_tags($my_html, '<b><u><i>');

// output to screen
echo $stripped_html;

?>

To make the script more secure the variables should be initialized.  Amoung 
other things this will help stop variables from being passed via a URL.

If you want to read more about this fuction just http://www.php.net/ followed 
by the function name.  For example:

http://www.php.net/strip_tags

Hope this helps,

Lyndon