data not uploading properly due to > - html

Question

Is there a way that i can escape >, I have a combo box which has an option below. I tried replacing > with > but it's still not uploading properly.
<select name="Category3" id="Category3">
<option value="Request |Running > 1 hour">Request |Running > 1 hour</option>
What it should upload is just Request |Running > 1 hour
but what is being uploaded is: Request |Running > 1 hour 1 hour' />
i dont know where its getting the other 1 hour' />
i tried removing the > and it just uploaded Request |Running 1 hour without the excess 1 hour' /> but i need it for consistency
here is the php code that im using to upload to db
<?php
error_reporting(0);
require 'include/DB_Open.php';
$Category3 = mysql_real_escape_string ($_POST['Category3']);
if (isset($ABC))
{
$sql="INSERT into XXX category_2
VALUES ('".$Category3."')";
$result=mysql_query($sql)or die(mysql_error());
}
?>
here is my code for retrieving the data
$sql="SELECT category_2
FROM XXX
WHERE resolved_date BETWEEN '" . $date . "' AND '" . $date1 . "'
ORDER BY resolved_date";
$myData = mysql_query($sql);
//to count if there are any results
$numrow = mysql_num_rows($myData);
if($numrow == 0)
{
echo "No results found.";
}
else
{
echo "$numrow";
}
{
echo "<table width='auto' cellpadding='1px' cellspacing='0px' border=1 align='center'>
<tr>
<th align='center'><strong>Category 3</strong></th>
</tr>";
while($info = mysql_fetch_array($myData))
{
echo "<form action='retrieve.php' method='post'>";
echo"<tr>";
echo "<td align='center'>" . $info['category_2'] . "<input type=hidden name=category_2 value=" . $info['category_2'] . "' /> </td>";
echo "</tr>";
echo "</form>";
}
}
echo "</table>";

Answer 1

Whenever you're displaying text that might include special HTML characters, you should use htmlentities() to encode it properly, so these characters don't cause the HTML to be misparsed (or worse, allow script injection).
$cat2 = htmlentities($info['category_2']);
echo "<td align='center'>" . $cat2 . "<input type='hidden' name='category_2[]' value='" . $cat2 . "' /> </td>";
You also were missing the ' after value=. I've added that (and quotes around all the other attributes).
Since you're creating multiple inputs with the same name, you need to give them an array-style name so that the server script can get all the values. $_POST['category_2'] will be an array.