What is the best way to put a Json string in a html tag?

Question

What is the best way to put a json string (encoded php array) into an html tag?

<?php
$content = array(key1=>'value 1', key2=>'value 2');
?>
<span class="someclass" data="<?php echo(json_encode($content)); ?>">Stuff Here</span>

This isn't valid because when it's encoded it will contain speech marks which break the html.

If I used the php function htmlentities would this be enough or could there still be some characters that would break it?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You could use base64 encoding, which can be easily decoded by every language you'd wish to use (like javascript):

<span class="someclass" data="<?php echo base64_encode (json_encode ($content)); ?>">Stuff Here</span>

It only uses az, AZ and 0-9.

Answer 2

Don't put it into a data attribute. It's easier to generate a javascript variable like

<script>
    var data = <?php echo json_encode() ?>
</script>