title: What is a replacement for mb_convert_encoding($string, 'utf-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');?
body: <p>I am looking to replace</p>
  
  <pre><code> mb_convert_encoding($string, 'utf-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>with something else, because I do not have the mb module installed and cannot install it. Is there anything? I tried utf8_decode($string), but that didn't work.</p>
  
  <p>This is different from the question listed, because it tries to do the reverse.</p>
  
  <p>I want to take a string, for example, with &auml; in UTF8 and convert it into &amp;auml; or its HTML entity as &amp;#num;</p>