Re: [PHP-DB] Fun with MySQL collation, HTML charset and PHP utf8_encode

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 2:42 PM, Dee Ayy <[email protected]> wrote:
>  I was thinking of using output buffering and then making 1 call to
>  utf8_encode, but I think a better question is, how do I stop using
>  utf8_encode completely?

If all components are using utf-8, you should have no problems with
charsets at all. By all components, I mean:
- Script files in utf-8;
- Database in utf-8;
- Database connection using utf-8;
- Content-type header set to utf-8.
With all these, you're free of charset hell, and can enjoy the beauty
of utf-8 completely without problems.

>  The rendered view I see in Firefox 2.0.0.12 is a question mark "?"
>  where the French character should have appeared.  If I use
>  utf8_encode, the character appears as it should.

Question mark means the character is not utf-8. Check where it comes
from. Might be the database or the way you are connecting to it. I
don't know much about mysql, I use postgresql. With it, you just have
to call pg_set_client_encoding() to make the connection in utf-8 mode,
and "create database with encoding='unicode'" to set up a database
using utf-8.

>  Luckily I'm on PHP 4.3.10, so I can't see what mb_check_encoding would
>  report -- if that would even help normally.

Shouls upgrade to PHP 5. PHP 4 is way out of date, is not getting
updates anymore, and will not even get security bugfixes after august
8th. It's been almost 4 years since PHP 5 was released.

http://www.php.net/archive/2007.php

Check the PHP 4 end of life announcement.

-- 
Bruno Lustosa <[email protected]>
ZCE - Zend Certified Engineer - PHP!
http://www.lustosa.net/