[Resolved] How to convert raw database data to simple readable format?

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[Himanshu Agarwal]

I have created a custom select field, in which I have added "long text" in custom field content.

When I display custom field content as raw database, it converts apostrophe ( ' ) to apostrophe with slash ( \' ).

How can we keep apostrophe, double quotation marks etc. as it is when displaying?

[Nigel]

I'm not sure it is possible to disable escaping special characters with the saved values, I'm checking with the developers.

You normally have a display value, and the saved value.

When you want to output the field you show the display value (the same string that appears in the select dropdown).

You don't want to display the display value, right? You want to output the value stored in the database, and this value has special characters, right?

[Himanshu Agarwal]

Yes, I want to output the value stored in the database, and this value has special characters, but i don't want to display special characters.

[Nigel]

I checked with the developers who said that is how WordPress stores the fields in the database, it isn't possible to prevent the escaping the special characters with backslashes.

However, when you retrieve these fields you can use the PHP function stripslashes to clean up the string: hidden link

In PHP you can retrieve the field with get_post_meta and then apply stripslashes.

If you need to do it where you insert the field with the types shortcode, you could register the following (simple, it could be improved) custom shortcode:

add_shortcode( 'strip-slashes', function( $atts, $content ){

	$content = apply_filters( 'the_content', $content );

	return stripslashes( $content );
});

and then use it like this:

[strip-slashes][types field='some-field'][/types][/strip-slashes]

[Himanshu Agarwal]

Thank you Nigel, code is working wonderfully.