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 only, and is actively tested from PHP 5.0.5 and
19 up. It has no core dependencies with other libraries. PHP
20 4 support was deprecated on December 31, 2007 with HTML Purifier 3.0.0.
21 HTML Purifier is not compatible with zend.ze1_compatibility_mode.
23 These optional extensions can enhance the capabilities of HTML Purifier:
25 * iconv : Converts text to and from non-UTF-8 encodings
26 * bcmath : Used for unit conversion and imagecrash protection
27 * tidy : Used for pretty-printing HTML
30 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
33 A big plus of HTML Purifier is its inerrant support of standards, so
34 your web-pages should be standards-compliant. (They should also use
35 semantic markup, but that's another issue altogether, one HTML Purifier
36 cannot fix without reading your mind.)
38 HTML Purifier can process these doctypes:
40 * XHTML 1.0 Transitional (default)
42 * HTML 4.01 Transitional
46 ...and these character encodings:
49 * Any encoding iconv supports (with crippled internationalization support)
51 These defaults reflect what my choices would be if I were authoring an
52 HTML document, however, what you choose depends on the nature of your
53 codebase. If you don't know what doctype you are using, you can determine
54 the doctype from this identifier at the top of your source code:
56 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
57 "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
59 ...and the character encoding from this code:
61 <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=ENCODING">
63 If the character encoding declaration is missing, STOP NOW, and
64 read 'docs/enduser-utf8.html' (web accessible at
65 http://htmlpurifier.org/docs/enduser-utf8.html). In fact, even if it is
66 present, read this document anyway, as many websites specify their
67 document's character encoding incorrectly.
70 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
71 3. Including the library
73 The procedure is quite simple:
75 require_once '/path/to/library/HTMLPurifier.auto.php';
77 This will setup an autoloader, so the library's files are only included
80 Only the contents in the library/ folder are necessary, so you can remove
81 everything else when using HTML Purifier in a production environment.
83 If you installed HTML Purifier via PEAR, all you need to do is:
85 require_once 'HTMLPurifier.auto.php';
87 Please note that the usual PEAR practice of including just the classes you
88 want will not work with HTML Purifier's autoloading scheme.
90 Advanced users, read on; other users can skip to section 4.
92 Autoload compatibility
93 ----------------------
95 HTML Purifier attempts to be as smart as possible when registering an
96 autoloader, but there are some cases where you will need to change
97 your own code to accomodate HTML Purifier. These are those cases:
99 PHP VERSION IS LESS THAN 5.1.2, AND YOU'VE DEFINED __autoload
100 Because spl_autoload_register() doesn't exist in early versions
101 of PHP 5, HTML Purifier has no way of adding itself to the autoload
102 stack. Modify your __autoload function to test
103 HTMLPurifier_Bootstrap::autoload($class)
105 For example, suppose your autoload function looks like this:
107 function __autoload($class) {
108 require str_replace('_', '/', $class) . '.php';
112 A modified version with HTML Purifier would look like this:
114 function __autoload($class) {
115 if (HTMLPurifier_Bootstrap::autoload($class)) return true;
116 require str_replace('_', '/', $class) . '.php';
120 Note that there *is* some custom behavior in our autoloader; the
121 original autoloader in our example would work for 99% of the time,
122 but would fail when including language files.
124 AN __autoload FUNCTION IS DECLARED AFTER OUR AUTOLOADER IS REGISTERED
125 spl_autoload_register() has the curious behavior of disabling
126 the existing __autoload() handler. Users need to explicitly
127 spl_autoload_register('__autoload'). Because we use SPL when it
128 is available, __autoload() will ALWAYS be disabled. If __autoload()
129 is declared before HTML Purifier is loaded, this is not a problem:
130 HTML Purifier will register the function for you. But if it is
131 declared afterwards, it will mysteriously not work. This
132 snippet of code (after your autoloader is defined) will fix it:
134 spl_autoload_register('__autoload')
136 Users should also be on guard if they use a version of PHP previous
137 to 5.1.2 without an autoloader--HTML Purifier will define __autoload()
138 for you, which can collide with an autoloader that was added by *you*
142 For better performance
143 ----------------------
145 Opcode caches, which greatly speed up PHP initialization for scripts
146 with large amounts of code (HTML Purifier included), don't like
147 autoloaders. We offer an include file that includes all of HTML Purifier's
148 files in one go in an opcode cache friendly manner:
150 // If /path/to/library isn't already in your include path, uncomment
152 // require '/path/to/library/HTMLPurifier.path.php';
154 require 'HTMLPurifier.includes.php';
156 Optional components still need to be included--you'll know if you try to
157 use a feature and you get a class doesn't exists error! The autoloader
158 can be used in conjunction with this approach to catch classes that are
159 missing. Simply add this afterwards:
161 require 'HTMLPurifier.autoload.php';
166 HTML Purifier has a standalone distribution; you can also generate
167 a standalone file from the full version by running the script
168 maintenance/generate-standalone.php . The standalone version has the
169 benefit of having most of its code in one file, so parsing is much
170 faster and the library is easier to manage.
172 If HTMLPurifier.standalone.php exists in the library directory, you
173 can use it like this:
175 require '/path/to/HTMLPurifier.standalone.php';
177 This is equivalent to including HTMLPurifier.includes.php, except that
178 the contents of standalone/ will be added to your path. To override this
179 behavior, specify a new HTMLPURIFIER_PREFIX where standalone files can
180 be found (usually, this will be one directory up, the "true" library
181 directory in full distributions). Don't forget to set your path too!
183 The autoloader can be added to the end to ensure the classes are
184 loaded when necessary; otherwise you can manually include them.
185 To use the autoloader, use this:
187 require 'HTMLPurifier.autoload.php';
192 HTMLPurifier.auto.php performs a number of operations that can be done
193 individually. These are:
195 HTMLPurifier.path.php
196 Puts /path/to/library in the include path. For high performance,
197 this should be done in php.ini.
199 HTMLPurifier.autoload.php
200 Registers our autoload handler HTMLPurifier_Bootstrap::autoload($class).
202 You can do these operations by yourself--in fact, you must modify your own
203 autoload handler if you are using a version of PHP earlier than PHP 5.1.2
204 (See "Autoload compatibility" above).
207 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
210 HTML Purifier is designed to run out-of-the-box, but occasionally HTML
211 Purifier needs to be told what to do. If you answer no to any of these
212 questions, read on; otherwise, you can skip to the next section (or, if you're
213 into configuring things just for the heck of it, skip to 4.3).
216 * Am I using XHTML 1.0 Transitional?
218 If you answered no to any of these questions, instantiate a configuration
221 $config = HTMLPurifier_Config::createDefault();
224 4.1. Setting a different character encoding
226 You really shouldn't use any other encoding except UTF-8, especially if you
227 plan to support multilingual websites (read section three for more details).
228 However, switching to UTF-8 is not always immediately feasible, so we can
231 HTML Purifier uses iconv to support other character encodings, as such,
232 any encoding that iconv supports <http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/>
233 HTML Purifier supports with this code:
235 $config->set('Core.Encoding', /* put your encoding here */);
237 An example usage for Latin-1 websites (the most common encoding for English
240 $config->set('Core.Encoding', 'ISO-8859-1');
242 Note that HTML Purifier's support for non-Unicode encodings is crippled by the
243 fact that any character not supported by that encoding will be silently
244 dropped, EVEN if it is ampersand escaped. If you want to work around
245 this, you are welcome to read docs/enduser-utf8.html for a fix,
246 but please be cognizant of the issues the "solution" creates (for this
247 reason, I do not include the solution in this document).
250 4.2. Setting a different doctype
252 For those of you using HTML 4.01 Transitional, you can disable
253 XHTML output like this:
255 $config->set('HTML.Doctype', 'HTML 4.01 Transitional');
257 Other supported doctypes include:
260 * HTML 4.01 Transitional
262 * XHTML 1.0 Transitional
268 There are more configuration directives which can be read about
269 here: <http://htmlpurifier.org/live/configdoc/plain.html> They're a bit boring,
270 but they can help out for those of you who like to exert maximum control over
271 your code. Some of the more interesting ones are configurable at the
272 demo <http://htmlpurifier.org/demo.php> and are well worth looking into
275 For example, you can fine tune allowed elements and attributes, convert
276 relative URLs to absolute ones, and even autoparagraph input text! These
277 are, respectively, %HTML.Allowed, %URI.MakeAbsolute and %URI.Base, and
278 %AutoFormat.AutoParagraph. The %Namespace.Directive naming convention
281 $config->set('Namespace.Directive', $value);
285 $config->set('HTML.Allowed', 'p,b,a[href],i');
286 $config->set('URI.Base', 'http://www.example.com');
287 $config->set('URI.MakeAbsolute', true);
288 $config->set('AutoFormat.AutoParagraph', true);
291 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
294 HTML Purifier generates some cache files (generally one or two) to speed up
295 its execution. For maximum performance, make sure that
296 library/HTMLPurifier/DefinitionCache/Serializer is writeable by the webserver.
298 If you are in the library/ folder of HTML Purifier, you can set the
299 appropriate permissions using:
301 chmod -R 0755 HTMLPurifier/DefinitionCache/Serializer
303 If the above command doesn't work, you may need to assign write permissions
304 to all. This may be necessary if your webserver runs as nobody, but is
305 not recommended since it means any other user can write files in the
308 chmod -R 0777 HTMLPurifier/DefinitionCache/Serializer
310 You can also chmod files via your FTP client; this option
311 is usually accessible by right clicking the corresponding directory and
312 then selecting "chmod" or "file permissions".
314 Starting with 2.0.1, HTML Purifier will generate friendly error messages
315 that will tell you exactly what you have to chmod the directory to, if in doubt,
318 If you are unable or unwilling to give write permissions to the cache
319 directory, you can either disable the cache (and suffer a performance
322 $config->set('Core.DefinitionCache', null);
324 Or move the cache directory somewhere else (no trailing slash):
326 $config->set('Cache.SerializerPath', '/home/user/absolute/path');
329 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
332 The interface is mind-numbingly simple:
334 $purifier = new HTMLPurifier();
335 $clean_html = $purifier->purify( $dirty_html );
337 ...or, if you're using the configuration object:
339 $purifier = new HTMLPurifier($config);
340 $clean_html = $purifier->purify( $dirty_html );
342 That's it! For more examples, check out docs/examples/ (they aren't very
343 different though). Also, docs/enduser-slow.html gives advice on what to
344 do if HTML Purifier is slowing down your application.
347 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
350 First, make sure library/HTMLPurifier/DefinitionCache/Serializer is
351 writable by the webserver (see Section 5: Caching above for details).
352 If your website is in UTF-8 and XHTML Transitional, use this code:
355 require_once '/path/to/htmlpurifier/library/HTMLPurifier.auto.php';
357 $purifier = new HTMLPurifier();
358 $clean_html = $purifier->purify($dirty_html);
361 If your website is in a different encoding or doctype, use this code:
364 require_once '/path/to/htmlpurifier/library/HTMLPurifier.auto.php';
366 $config = HTMLPurifier_Config::createDefault();
367 $config->set('Core.Encoding', 'ISO-8859-1'); // replace with your encoding
368 $config->set('HTML.Doctype', 'HTML 4.01 Transitional'); // replace with your doctype
369 $purifier = new HTMLPurifier($config);
371 $clean_html = $purifier->purify($dirty_html);