php script reads and stores arabic data as question marks

Question

I've a problem with storing my data into an XML file:

I am using a PHP script that receives data from user via mobile app and inserts it into an XML file. But if the user inserts arabic words (name-password-...etc), it's stored as question marks in the XML file.

Hint: I already set the XML encoding = UTF8.

Here's my code :

<html>
<head></head>
<form action="sign.php" method="post">
 name :<input type="text" name="name"/><br />
 pass :<input type="text" name="pass"/><br />
 mob :<input type="text" name="mobile"/><br />
 mail :<input type="text" name="email"/><br />
<input type="submit" name="send" value="send"/>
</form>


</html>
 <?php
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=Windows-1256');
$test = utf8_encode("ياسمين");
echo mb_detect_encoding($test);

echo $test;
if(isset($_POST['send'])){



if(isset($_POST['name']) && isset($_POST['pass']) && isset($_POST['mobile']) &&isset($_POST['email'])) { 
 $name =  $_POST['name'];
     $pass = $_POST['pass'];
 $mob = $_POST['mobile'];
 $mail = $_POST['email'];

  $xml = simplexml_load_file('mowasla.xml');
$user = $xml->users->addChild('user');
$user->addChild('user_name', $name);
$user->addChild('pass', $pass);
$user->addChild('phone', $mob);
$user->addChild('email', $mail);
file_put_contents('mowasla.xml', $xml->asXML());
echo("done");
echo ($name);


}else{
 echo("error");
 die;

     }
  }

 ?>

They were probably question marks before even saving the file, you need to show all relevant code. — Esailija, Feb 03 '13 at 13:47
Make sure that the encoding of the XML file itself is UTF-8, and just to be safe I'd also make sure the PHP script was UTF-8. Aside from that we need more info to help with the problem. — Ynhockey, Feb 03 '13 at 13:50
are the file created for each data? or its saved some where and you re-use it? — , Feb 03 '13 at 14:29

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:24

In PHP most of the XML related functions expect the string-data you pass in there to be UTF-8 encoded.

In your case the arabic text is not UTF-8 encoded. Therefore the XML library does replace the binary character sequences it can not identify with a substitution character, here the question mark (?).

So before you can insert the arabic words, you need to ensure the strings are UTF-8 encoded.

Please see how this generally works (this is first of all not related to PHP but to HTTP and HTML) on the W3C website:

Character encodings - W3C Internationalization

To technically answer your question with a solution to your problem you at least need to share in which encoding the submitted data (the arabic words, username, password) is. Without that information displaying question marks looks correct because like your computer, we can not say either.

See as well:

UTF-8 all the way through

php script reads and stores arabic data as question marks

1 Answers1