confused about saving html into database

[eluser]sessions[/eluser]
I have a project that saves html into a mysql database. Usually <pre>, <code> and <p>. Inserting and Updating the db worked fine locally. Once I moved the project to a GD hosted account I get a '406 Not Acceptable' error when I attempt to update or insert content that includes opening or closing html brackets < >:

----------------------------------------------------

Not Acceptable

An appropriate representation of the requested resource /index.php/manage/addedit could not be found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

----------------------------------------------------

If I removed the < and > from content being inserted/updated it works fine. I thought this was an encoding problem. I did find that my local database was set to utf8_unicode_ci whereas the GD live database was set to latin1_swedish_ci. I changed the live db charaset to utf8_unicode_ci but same problem.

What other checks should I make to successfully update/insert html brackets ( < > ) into the db?

[eluser]InsiteFX[/eluser]
PHP Net htmlentities

[eluser]sessions[/eluser]
Same result after changing this:
$this->db->set('code', $_POST['code']);

to this:
$this->db->set('code', htmlentities($_POST['code'], ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8"));

GD support narrowed it down to my code is triggering 'Mod_Security' issue. I tried turning it off with a .htaccess setting but I got more errors. Am I using htmlentities() correctly above?

If I am, any other suggestions to get html to insert to my db?

Thanks for looking.

[eluser]InsiteFX[/eluser]
Sorry it should have been htmlspecialchars.

You should use it on your text that you are saving to the database.

So if your saving a form textarea that would be the field that you use htmlspecialchars on.

If it is already in the database it is in the wrong format, you will need to re-save it.

Code:

$data = array(
    'code' => htmlspecialchars($this->input->post('code', TRUE), ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
);

[eluser]sessions[/eluser]
Same result.

As a test, if I type only '& lt;' in the 'code' textarea I still get the 406. I'm starting to understand that my hosting company has ridiculous security settings that I can't change ( a sacrifice for such a cheap plan ).

Thanks for looking though!

[eluser]sessions[/eluser]
&lt;

[eluser]InsiteFX[/eluser]
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