title: PHP: How to convert ASCII to HTML or how to decode string
body: <p>I have a database table (SQL Server 2008) with a table that contains some ASCII-encoded characters (formatted as <code>nvarchar(max)</code> ). </p>
  
  <p>Usually the browser converts these automatically to HTML but I use a jQuery plugin that cannot read these and requires the content in HTML. I am passing my content to this plugin using PHP. </p>
  
  <p>Is there a way in PHP to convert such strings manually to HTML ?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Example - db content:</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Some sample text with &amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;HTML&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Example - required output for plugin:</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;p&gt;Some sample text with &lt;strong&gt;HTML&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I tried finding a solution myself but it seems there are different approaches available and I wasn't sure about the correct one here. </p>