Strip out HTML and Special Characters

Question

I\'d like to use any php function or whatever so that i can remove any HTML code and special characters and gives me only alpha-numeric output

$des = "He         


        

Answer 1

Strip out tags, leave only alphanumeric characters and space:

$clear = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]/', '', strip_tags($des));

Edit: all credit to DaveRandom for the perfect solution...

$clear = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]/', '', strip_tags(html_entity_decode($des)));