Escape WordPress shortcodes in content with a shortcode

Maybe not how you were expecting to solve this problem, was it? Maybe you thought about it and here I have one for you. I just wrote an article about integrating Google +1 and noticed that anywhere the shortcode [p1] is placed is executed. Not what we want when we are showing someone how to use them.

This is the escape shortcode:

[esc][p1][/esc]

This is how the shortcode appears after it has been escaped.

[p1]

The Escape Shortcode

There will be a time when you want to write about a cool shortcode you created like I just did and you will need your shortcodes to be un-executed.

// HTML Special Chars shortcode
function escapeHTML( $atts, $content=null ){
	/* Author: Nicholas P. Iler
	 * URL: http://www.ilertech.com/2011/06/escape-wordpress-shortcodes-in-content-with-a-shortcode/
	 */
		$plus1_code = htmlentities($content);
		return $plus1_code;
}

add_shortcode('esc', 'escapeHTML');

Conclusion

Now, you can escape anything you like. Not just shortcodes. I found a resource that suggest that merely entering double-brackets escapes them like this “[[ ]]” but I have not found this to work for me so I just threw this one together already knowing about the core PHP function htmlentities.