Just two great functions for daily use:
/* Converts any HTML-entities into characters */
function my_numeric2character($t)
{
$convmap = array(0x0, 0x2FFFF, 0, 0xFFFF);
return mb_decode_numericentity($t, $convmap, 'UTF-8');
}
/* Converts any characters into HTML-entities */
function my_character2numeric($t)
{
$convmap = array(0x0, 0x2FFFF, 0, 0xFFFF);
return mb_encode_numericentity($t, $convmap, 'UTF-8');
}
print my_numeric2character('’ ἀ â');
print my_character2numeric(' ’ â ');