HTML / Javascript in custom field textarea?

Question

Is there a filter for allowing HTML / Javascript into a custom field textarea? I'm using get_post_meta.

On the frontpage I want the HTML / Javascript to run, not to be displayed.

Answer 1

The correct answer is esc_textarea().

Example:

<textarea><?php echo esc_textarea($whatever); ?></textarea>

Answer 2

I answered an identical question earlier today HERE which tackled the same issue. In the case where you don't want to use a plugin like that suggested by EarnestoDev, you can simply wrap the output of your <textarea></textarea> with PHP's htmlspecialchars function like so;

<textarea name="my_html">

      <?php echo htmlspecialchars($content); ?>

</textarea>

Regardless of whether its a textarea or an input field etc, you still need to wrap your input in htmlspecialchars to preserve your tags from being stripped.

Answer 3

Use the plugin I posted here: Problem with <code> tag .

Does what you need and more!

Answer 4

Yes, there must be. When you save this into a custom field with a key let's say "test"...

<p>Test1</p><p>Test2</p>

You will get Test1Test2 when you run...

echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'test', true);

If I knew which filter was responsible for this I'd just do a remove_filter(). It would be great if there was a plugin that would show you what filters are registered to a specific hook. (There is a get_post_meta hook defined in /wp-includes/meta.php)