3 How to install HTML Purifier
5 HTML Purifier is designed to run out of the box, so actually using the
6 library is extremely easy. (Although... if you were looking for a
7 step-by-step installation GUI, you've downloaded the wrong software!)
9 While the impatient can get going immediately with some of the sample
10 code at the bottom of this library, it's well worth reading this entire
11 document--most of the other documentation assumes that you are familiar
15 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
18 HTML Purifier is PHP 5 and PHP 7, and is actively tested from PHP 5.0.5
19 and up. It has no core dependencies with other libraries.
21 These optional extensions can enhance the capabilities of HTML Purifier:
23 * iconv : Converts text to and from non-UTF-8 encodings
24 * bcmath : Used for unit conversion and imagecrash protection
25 * tidy : Used for pretty-printing HTML
27 These optional libraries can enhance the capabilities of HTML Purifier:
29 * CSSTidy : Clean CSS stylesheets using %Core.ExtractStyleBlocks
30 Note: You should use the modernized fork of CSSTidy available
31 at https://github.com/Cerdic/CSSTidy
32 * Net_IDNA2 (PEAR) : IRI support using %Core.EnableIDNA
33 Note: This is not necessary for PHP 5.3 or later
35 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
38 A big plus of HTML Purifier is its inerrant support of standards, so
39 your web-pages should be standards-compliant. (They should also use
40 semantic markup, but that's another issue altogether, one HTML Purifier
41 cannot fix without reading your mind.)
43 HTML Purifier can process these doctypes:
45 * XHTML 1.0 Transitional (default)
47 * HTML 4.01 Transitional
51 ...and these character encodings:
54 * Any encoding iconv supports (with crippled internationalization support)
56 These defaults reflect what my choices would be if I were authoring an
57 HTML document, however, what you choose depends on the nature of your
58 codebase. If you don't know what doctype you are using, you can determine
59 the doctype from this identifier at the top of your source code:
61 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
62 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
64 ...and the character encoding from this code:
66 <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=ENCODING">
68 If the character encoding declaration is missing, STOP NOW, and
69 read 'docs/enduser-utf8.html' (web accessible at
70 http://htmlpurifier.org/docs/enduser-utf8.html). In fact, even if it is
71 present, read this document anyway, as many websites specify their
72 document's character encoding incorrectly.
75 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
76 3. Including the library
78 The procedure is quite simple:
80 require_once '/path/to/library/HTMLPurifier.auto.php';
82 This will setup an autoloader, so the library's files are only included
85 Only the contents in the library/ folder are necessary, so you can remove
86 everything else when using HTML Purifier in a production environment.
88 If you installed HTML Purifier via PEAR, all you need to do is:
90 require_once 'HTMLPurifier.auto.php';
92 Please note that the usual PEAR practice of including just the classes you
93 want will not work with HTML Purifier's autoloading scheme.
95 Advanced users, read on; other users can skip to section 4.
97 Autoload compatibility
98 ----------------------
100 HTML Purifier attempts to be as smart as possible when registering an
101 autoloader, but there are some cases where you will need to change
102 your own code to accomodate HTML Purifier. These are those cases:
104 PHP VERSION IS LESS THAN 5.1.2, AND YOU'VE DEFINED __autoload
105 Because spl_autoload_register() doesn't exist in early versions
106 of PHP 5, HTML Purifier has no way of adding itself to the autoload
107 stack. Modify your __autoload function to test
108 HTMLPurifier_Bootstrap::autoload($class)
110 For example, suppose your autoload function looks like this:
112 function __autoload($class) {
113 require str_replace('_', '/', $class) . '.php';
117 A modified version with HTML Purifier would look like this:
119 function __autoload($class) {
120 if (HTMLPurifier_Bootstrap::autoload($class)) return true;
121 require str_replace('_', '/', $class) . '.php';
125 Note that there *is* some custom behavior in our autoloader; the
126 original autoloader in our example would work for 99% of the time,
127 but would fail when including language files.
129 AN __autoload FUNCTION IS DECLARED AFTER OUR AUTOLOADER IS REGISTERED
130 spl_autoload_register() has the curious behavior of disabling
131 the existing __autoload() handler. Users need to explicitly
132 spl_autoload_register('__autoload'). Because we use SPL when it
133 is available, __autoload() will ALWAYS be disabled. If __autoload()
134 is declared before HTML Purifier is loaded, this is not a problem:
135 HTML Purifier will register the function for you. But if it is
136 declared afterwards, it will mysteriously not work. This
137 snippet of code (after your autoloader is defined) will fix it:
139 spl_autoload_register('__autoload')
141 Users should also be on guard if they use a version of PHP previous
142 to 5.1.2 without an autoloader--HTML Purifier will define __autoload()
143 for you, which can collide with an autoloader that was added by *you*
147 For better performance
148 ----------------------
150 Opcode caches, which greatly speed up PHP initialization for scripts
151 with large amounts of code (HTML Purifier included), don't like
152 autoloaders. We offer an include file that includes all of HTML Purifier's
153 files in one go in an opcode cache friendly manner:
155 // If /path/to/library isn't already in your include path, uncomment
157 // require '/path/to/library/HTMLPurifier.path.php';
159 require 'HTMLPurifier.includes.php';
161 Optional components still need to be included--you'll know if you try to
162 use a feature and you get a class doesn't exists error! The autoloader
163 can be used in conjunction with this approach to catch classes that are
164 missing. Simply add this afterwards:
166 require 'HTMLPurifier.autoload.php';
171 HTML Purifier has a standalone distribution; you can also generate
172 a standalone file from the full version by running the script
173 maintenance/generate-standalone.php . The standalone version has the
174 benefit of having most of its code in one file, so parsing is much
175 faster and the library is easier to manage.
177 If HTMLPurifier.standalone.php exists in the library directory, you
178 can use it like this:
180 require '/path/to/HTMLPurifier.standalone.php';
182 This is equivalent to including HTMLPurifier.includes.php, except that
183 the contents of standalone/ will be added to your path. To override this
184 behavior, specify a new HTMLPURIFIER_PREFIX where standalone files can
185 be found (usually, this will be one directory up, the "true" library
186 directory in full distributions). Don't forget to set your path too!
188 The autoloader can be added to the end to ensure the classes are
189 loaded when necessary; otherwise you can manually include them.
190 To use the autoloader, use this:
192 require 'HTMLPurifier.autoload.php';
197 HTMLPurifier.auto.php performs a number of operations that can be done
198 individually. These are:
200 HTMLPurifier.path.php
201 Puts /path/to/library in the include path. For high performance,
202 this should be done in php.ini.
204 HTMLPurifier.autoload.php
205 Registers our autoload handler HTMLPurifier_Bootstrap::autoload($class).
207 You can do these operations by yourself--in fact, you must modify your own
208 autoload handler if you are using a version of PHP earlier than PHP 5.1.2
209 (See "Autoload compatibility" above).
212 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
215 HTML Purifier is designed to run out-of-the-box, but occasionally HTML
216 Purifier needs to be told what to do. If you answer no to any of these
217 questions, read on; otherwise, you can skip to the next section (or, if you're
218 into configuring things just for the heck of it, skip to 4.3).
221 * Am I using XHTML 1.0 Transitional?
223 If you answered no to any of these questions, instantiate a configuration
226 $config = HTMLPurifier_Config::createDefault();
229 4.1. Setting a different character encoding
231 You really shouldn't use any other encoding except UTF-8, especially if you
232 plan to support multilingual websites (read section three for more details).
233 However, switching to UTF-8 is not always immediately feasible, so we can
236 HTML Purifier uses iconv to support other character encodings, as such,
237 any encoding that iconv supports <http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/>
238 HTML Purifier supports with this code:
240 $config->set('Core.Encoding', /* put your encoding here */);
242 An example usage for Latin-1 websites (the most common encoding for English
245 $config->set('Core.Encoding', 'ISO-8859-1');
247 Note that HTML Purifier's support for non-Unicode encodings is crippled by the
248 fact that any character not supported by that encoding will be silently
249 dropped, EVEN if it is ampersand escaped. If you want to work around
250 this, you are welcome to read docs/enduser-utf8.html for a fix,
251 but please be cognizant of the issues the "solution" creates (for this
252 reason, I do not include the solution in this document).
255 4.2. Setting a different doctype
257 For those of you using HTML 4.01 Transitional, you can disable
258 XHTML output like this:
260 $config->set('HTML.Doctype', 'HTML 4.01 Transitional');
262 Other supported doctypes include:
265 * HTML 4.01 Transitional
267 * XHTML 1.0 Transitional
273 There are more configuration directives which can be read about
274 here: <http://htmlpurifier.org/live/configdoc/plain.html> They're a bit boring,
275 but they can help out for those of you who like to exert maximum control over
276 your code. Some of the more interesting ones are configurable at the
277 demo <http://htmlpurifier.org/demo.php> and are well worth looking into
280 For example, you can fine tune allowed elements and attributes, convert
281 relative URLs to absolute ones, and even autoparagraph input text! These
282 are, respectively, %HTML.Allowed, %URI.MakeAbsolute and %URI.Base, and
283 %AutoFormat.AutoParagraph. The %Namespace.Directive naming convention
286 $config->set('Namespace.Directive', $value);
290 $config->set('HTML.Allowed', 'p,b,a[href],i');
291 $config->set('URI.Base', 'http://www.example.com');
292 $config->set('URI.MakeAbsolute', true);
293 $config->set('AutoFormat.AutoParagraph', true);
296 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
299 HTML Purifier generates some cache files (generally one or two) to speed up
300 its execution. For maximum performance, make sure that
301 library/HTMLPurifier/DefinitionCache/Serializer is writeable by the webserver.
303 If you are in the library/ folder of HTML Purifier, you can set the
304 appropriate permissions using:
306 chmod -R 0755 HTMLPurifier/DefinitionCache/Serializer
308 If the above command doesn't work, you may need to assign write permissions
311 chmod -R 0775 HTMLPurifier/DefinitionCache/Serializer
313 You can also chmod files via your FTP client; this option
314 is usually accessible by right clicking the corresponding directory and
315 then selecting "chmod" or "file permissions".
317 Starting with 2.0.1, HTML Purifier will generate friendly error messages
318 that will tell you exactly what you have to chmod the directory to, if in doubt,
321 If you are unable or unwilling to give write permissions to the cache
322 directory, you can either disable the cache (and suffer a performance
325 $config->set('Core.DefinitionCache', null);
327 Or move the cache directory somewhere else (no trailing slash):
329 $config->set('Cache.SerializerPath', '/home/user/absolute/path');
332 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
335 The interface is mind-numbingly simple:
337 $purifier = new HTMLPurifier($config);
338 $clean_html = $purifier->purify( $dirty_html );
340 That's it! For more examples, check out docs/examples/ (they aren't very
341 different though). Also, docs/enduser-slow.html gives advice on what to
342 do if HTML Purifier is slowing down your application.
345 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
348 First, make sure library/HTMLPurifier/DefinitionCache/Serializer is
349 writable by the webserver (see Section 5: Caching above for details).
350 If your website is in UTF-8 and XHTML Transitional, use this code:
353 require_once '/path/to/htmlpurifier/library/HTMLPurifier.auto.php';
355 $config = HTMLPurifier_Config::createDefault();
356 $purifier = new HTMLPurifier($config);
357 $clean_html = $purifier->purify($dirty_html);
360 If your website is in a different encoding or doctype, use this code:
363 require_once '/path/to/htmlpurifier/library/HTMLPurifier.auto.php';
365 $config = HTMLPurifier_Config::createDefault();
366 $config->set('Core.Encoding', 'ISO-8859-1'); // replace with your encoding
367 $config->set('HTML.Doctype', 'HTML 4.01 Transitional'); // replace with your doctype
368 $purifier = new HTMLPurifier($config);
370 $clean_html = $purifier->purify($dirty_html);