PHP Encoding (Guess UTF-8)

Question

I'm programming a system so an user can edit what he posts. Simplified it's a textarea/input field which stores in a database and a page that retrieves it. The problem is, I think the encoding isn't okay, because strings are stored in the database like "Ã©" or something (phpmyadmin view).

Insert page:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
I insert mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['field']);

Output page:

Object from database.
htmlspecialchars($object->field);

But expected is: Output page:

Object from database.
htmlentities($object->field);, right?

Why isn't the data stored in MySql properly?

Sebastian Schmidt · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-11 11:15:20Z

4

If your database encoding is set to utf-8, you need to set the tranfer encoding to utf-8, too. To do that you have to query

SET NAMES utf8;

before inserting into the table.

answered Nov 11, 2010 at 11:15

Sebastian Schmidt

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2 Comments

AndreKR Over a year ago

+1 This is necessary to see the correct encoding in phpMyAdmin. However, it is usually not necessary to get the same out of the DB that has been put in.

Hammerite Over a year ago

That is true Andre, but if you connect to the database using the wrong character set then you may actually be storing mis-encoded data in the database table. This is obviously undesirable.

Victor Nicollet · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-11 11:13:26Z

2

Is the database connection UTF-8 ? Bear in mind, that's not the default encoding, you have to explicitly set it yourself.

answered Nov 11, 2010 at 11:13

Victor Nicollet

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Comments

AndreKR · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-11 11:16:43Z

1

You have to tell htmlentities that you feed it UTF-8:

htmlentities($text, ENT_COMPAT, "UTF-8");

Otherwise it assumes it gets ISO-8859-1.

answered Nov 11, 2010 at 11:16

AndreKR

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1 Comment

Simon Over a year ago

Maybe i'm looking for something different, because i've placed something in the database ("Testé"), and it's displayed okay with htmlentities($text); How can I insert "Testé" correctly without the help of phpmyadmin?

Scott · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-11 11:22:32Z

0

This site http://developer.loftdigital.com/blog/php-utf-8-cheatsheet should give you an idea of whats needed for UTF-8 in PHP and MySQL.

Oh and dont forget to use these after connecting to your DB:

mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");
mysql_query("SET CHARACTER SET 'utf8'");

answered Nov 11, 2010 at 11:22

Scott

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