PHP special characters not showing

Question

Can anyone help with with special characters and php.

The following php:

$IHaventReceivedCode = "Je n'ai pas reçu mon code";

is showing as:

Je n'ai pas re�u mon code

I have tried adding to the file at the top:

ini_set('default_charset', 'UTF-8');
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');

and also to the head tag:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8">

However, the character fails to show.

Any ideas?

Did you check if your PHP file itself is being stored as UTF-8? — hw., Jun 10 '13 at 15:29
If you use plain HTML instead, does the problem persist? It might be an encoding of the whole file issue. — KamikazeCZ, Jun 10 '13 at 15:30
hw - it's a shared server i don't have access to the php.ini file Kamikaze - yes works fine when normal plain html — user2183216, Jun 10 '13 at 15:36
See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279170/utf-8-all-the-way-through, this has been asked many times on SO — Sam Dufel, Jun 10 '13 at 15:39
in connection.php: mysqli_set_charset($con,“utf8”); and in sql collation utf=8 — Ijaz Ahmed Bhatti, Sep 27 '20 at 06:23

Wallack · Answer 1 · 2013-06-10T15:38:04.147

5

Try to convert the document to that encoding. If for example you are using Notepad++ you can do the following:

enter image description here

edited Jun 10 '13 at 15:38

answered Jun 10 '13 at 15:31

Wallack

I tried that but it appeared to remove those characters/convert them to without the accents. I added: header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1'); And it then rendered fine.. however not really sure why utf-8 one didnt work – user2183216 Jun 10 '13 at 15:35
No, always encode in UTF-8 **without BOM**; otherwise you can't send headers and the like. – Marcel Korpel Jun 10 '13 at 15:35
@user2183216 Because your file is apparently saved as ISO 8859-1. – Marcel Korpel Jun 10 '13 at 15:36
ah i see, this is now resolved using this - thanks! – user2183216 Jun 10 '13 at 15:52

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 10 '13 at 15:32

If your files are in UTF-8... You can try utf8_encode
$IHaventReceivedCode = utf8_encode("Je n'ai pas reçu mon code");

Or decode utf8_decode
$IHaventReceivedCode = utf8_decode("Je n'ai pas reçu mon code");

I'm pretty sure that one of them should change the output...

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 10 '13 at 15:34

1

Use a text editor that supports different encoding. If you're using Notepad try switching to a more sophisticated text editor.

answered Jun 10 '13 at 15:34

ForOhFor

3 Answers3