I have:
$str = 'test%2B';
echo html_entity_decode($str);
I want it to return test +
What am I doing wrong?
NOTE: Sorry, the string cannot be modified. It's from an external source, I just need to make it replace the %2B with + signs somehow with PHP.
You didn't escape the space, and you should be using urldecode instead of html_entity_decode.
Try
$str = 'test%20%2B';
echo urldecode($str); // test +
If you wish to use html_entity_decode, use +:
$str = 'test +';
echo html_entity_decode($str); // test +
EDIT: If you need to decode a url that you cannot change yourself, urldecode should still work fine.
Try + instead. In your example, you are using URL encoding syntax and not HTML entity syntax.
That string is encoded for a URL, not with HTML entities.
You need urldecode.
echo urldecode($str); // "test +"
An HTML-encoded string would look like this: test +, because none of those characters need HTML-encoding.
In html a + is +. Try
$str = 'test +';
$str = "test %2B";
echo urldecode($str);