XSS filtering function in PHP

the best and the secure way is to use HTML Purifier. Follow this link for some hints on using it with Zend Framework.

HTML Purifier with Zend Framework

Simple way? Use strip_tags():

$str = strip_tags($input);

You can also use filter_var() for that:

$str = filter_var($input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

The advantage of filter_var() is that you can control the behaviour by, for example, stripping or encoding low and high characters.

Here is a list of sanitizing filters.

There are a number of ways hackers put to use for XSS attacks, PHP's built-in functions do not respond to all sorts of XSS attacks. Hence, functions such as strip_tags, filter_var, mysql_real_escape_string, htmlentities, htmlspecialchars, etc do not protect us 100%. You need a better mechanism, here is what is solution:

function xss_clean($data)
{
// Fix &entity\n;
$data = str_replace(array('&','<','>'), array('&','<','>'), $data);
$data = preg_replace('/(&#*\w+)[\x00-\x20]+;/u', '$1;', $data);
$data = preg_replace('/(&#x*[0-9A-F]+);*/iu', '$1;', $data);
$data = html_entity_decode($data, ENT_COMPAT, 'UTF-8');

// Remove any attribute starting with "on" or xmlns
$data = preg_replace('#(<[^>]+?[\x00-\x20"\'])(?:on|xmlns)[^>]*+>#iu', '$1>', $data);

// Remove javascript: and vbscript: protocols
$data = preg_replace('#([a-z]*)[\x00-\x20]*=[\x00-\x20]*([`\'"]*)[\x00-\x20]*j[\x00-\x20]*a[\x00-\x20]*v[\x00-\x20]*a[\x00-\x20]*s[\x00-\x20]*c[\x00-\x20]*r[\x00-\x20]*i[\x00-\x20]*p[\x00-\x20]*t[\x00-\x20]*:#iu', '$1=$2nojavascript...', $data);
$data = preg_replace('#([a-z]*)[\x00-\x20]*=([\'"]*)[\x00-\x20]*v[\x00-\x20]*b[\x00-\x20]*s[\x00-\x20]*c[\x00-\x20]*r[\x00-\x20]*i[\x00-\x20]*p[\x00-\x20]*t[\x00-\x20]*:#iu', '$1=$2novbscript...', $data);
$data = preg_replace('#([a-z]*)[\x00-\x20]*=([\'"]*)[\x00-\x20]*-moz-binding[\x00-\x20]*:#u', '$1=$2nomozbinding...', $data);

// Only works in IE: <span style="width: expression(alert('Ping!'));"></span>
$data = preg_replace('#(<[^>]+?)style[\x00-\x20]*=[\x00-\x20]*[`\'"]*.*?expression[\x00-\x20]*\([^>]*+>#i', '$1>', $data);
$data = preg_replace('#(<[^>]+?)style[\x00-\x20]*=[\x00-\x20]*[`\'"]*.*?behaviour[\x00-\x20]*\([^>]*+>#i', '$1>', $data);
$data = preg_replace('#(<[^>]+?)style[\x00-\x20]*=[\x00-\x20]*[`\'"]*.*?s[\x00-\x20]*c[\x00-\x20]*r[\x00-\x20]*i[\x00-\x20]*p[\x00-\x20]*t[\x00-\x20]*:*[^>]*+>#iu', '$1>', $data);

// Remove namespaced elements (we do not need them)
$data = preg_replace('#</*\w+:\w[^>]*+>#i', '', $data);

do
{
    // Remove really unwanted tags
    $old_data = $data;
    $data = preg_replace('#</*(?:applet|b(?:ase|gsound|link)|embed|frame(?:set)?|i(?:frame|layer)|l(?:ayer|ink)|meta|object|s(?:cript|tyle)|title|xml)[^>]*+>#i', '', $data);
}
while ($old_data !== $data);

// we are done...
return $data;
}