function filter_xss

Filters HTML to prevent cross-site-scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.

Based on kses by Ulf Harnhammar, see http://sourceforge.net/projects/kses. For examples of various XSS attacks, see: http://ha.ckers.org/xss.html.

This code does four things:

  • Removes characters and constructs that can trick browsers.
  • Makes sure all HTML entities are well-formed.
  • Makes sure all HTML tags and attributes are well-formed.
  • Makes sure no HTML tags contain URLs with a disallowed protocol (e.g. javascript:).

Parameters

$string: The string with raw HTML in it. It will be stripped of everything that can cause an XSS attack.

$allowed_tags: An array of allowed tags.

Return value

An XSS safe version of $string, or an empty string if $string is not valid UTF-8.

See also

drupal_validate_utf8()

Related topics

26 calls to filter_xss()
aggregator_filter_xss in drupal/core/modules/aggregator/aggregator.module
Safely renders HTML content, as allowed.
AlterTest::testExecutionOrder in drupal/core/modules/system/lib/Drupal/system/Tests/Form/AlterTest.php
Tests execution order of hook_form_alter() and hook_form_FORM_ID_alter().
CommentTokenReplaceTest::testCommentTokenReplacement in drupal/core/modules/comment/lib/Drupal/comment/Tests/CommentTokenReplaceTest.php
Creates a comment, then tests the tokens generated from it.
comment_tokens in drupal/core/modules/comment/comment.tokens.inc
Implements hook_tokens().
DBLogTest::assertLogMessage in drupal/core/modules/dblog/lib/Drupal/dblog/Tests/DBLogTest.php
Confirms that a log message appears on the database log overview screen.

... See full list

File

drupal/core/includes/common.inc, line 1314
Common functions that many Drupal modules will need to reference.

Code

function filter_xss($string, $allowed_tags = array(
  'a',
  'em',
  'strong',
  'cite',
  'blockquote',
  'code',
  'ul',
  'ol',
  'li',
  'dl',
  'dt',
  'dd',
)) {

  // Only operate on valid UTF-8 strings. This is necessary to prevent cross
  // site scripting issues on Internet Explorer 6.
  if (!drupal_validate_utf8($string)) {
    return '';
  }

  // Store the text format.
  _filter_xss_split($allowed_tags, TRUE);

  // Remove NULL characters (ignored by some browsers).
  $string = str_replace(chr(0), '', $string);

  // Remove Netscape 4 JS entities.
  $string = preg_replace('%&\\s*\\{[^}]*(\\}\\s*;?|$)%', '', $string);

  // Defuse all HTML entities.
  $string = str_replace('&', '&', $string);

  // Change back only well-formed entities in our whitelist:
  // Decimal numeric entities.
  $string = preg_replace('/&#([0-9]+;)/', '&#\\1', $string);

  // Hexadecimal numeric entities.
  $string = preg_replace('/&#[Xx]0*((?:[0-9A-Fa-f]{2})+;)/', '&#x\\1', $string);

  // Named entities.
  $string = preg_replace('/&([A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9]*;)/', '&\\1', $string);
  return preg_replace_callback('%
    (
    <(?=[^a-zA-Z!/])  # a lone <
    |                 # or
    <!--.*?-->        # a comment
    |                 # or
    <[^>]*(>|$)       # a string that starts with a <, up until the > or the end of the string
    |                 # or
    >                 # just a >
    )%x', '_filter_xss_split', $string);
}