ÆØÅ Letters randomly being replaced by Ã¦Ã˜Ã¥

Question

Yeah, I have an issue with ÆØÅ randomly being replaced with Ã¦Ã˜Ã¥ when loading/refreshing a php page calling on some values...

It worked fine until I added

$Filename = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/", "", $Filename);

but that caused the script to delete the . in the file extensions, so I removed the code. Now it randomly replaces the letters upon load/refresh

$Filename=$_FILES['Filename']['name'];
$Description=$_POST['Description'];
$Contact=$_POST['Contact'];
$Time = gmdate('Y-m-d H:i');
$Title=$_POST['Title'];
$Filename = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/", "", $Filename);

if(move_uploaded_file($_FILES['Filename']['tmp_name'], $target)) {
echo "Filen ". basename( $_FILES['Filename']['name']). " er nå lagt til blant Alta Botanikkforeningens funn.";
mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "") or die(mysql_error()) ;
mysql_select_db("altabotanikk") or die(mysql_error()) ;

mysql_query("INSERT INTO picture (Filename,Description,Contact,Time,Title)
VALUES ('$Filename', '$Description', '$Contact', now(), '$Title')") ;
} else {
echo "Det skjedde noe galt her :/";
}

Due to it being random and no errors anywhere, I have no idea what is causing this.

HTML declaring UTF-8

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

Your mysql connection does not know you want to talk in UTF8 — xdbas, Jun 18 '13 at 21:44
Make sure you are using the right encoding for both mysql and html. — Hanlet Escaño, Jun 18 '13 at 21:44
@Basje Nono, it worked fin 100% of the time until I added the mentioned code snippet — The Last Melody, Jun 18 '13 at 21:45
@TheLastMelody does the same happen with different browsers? I am wondering if the strange characters were cached. — Hanlet Escaño, Jun 18 '13 at 21:51
Weird, sorry, could you update your code and show us where/how you are being especific about UTF-8 in your HTML? Thanks. — Hanlet Escaño, Jun 18 '13 at 22:06
Thank you. Maybe you should try this idea: http://stackoverflow.com/a/906752/752527 This way, if there is something else messing with it, it might fix it — Hanlet Escaño, Jun 18 '13 at 22:10
Sorry, I am just throwing answers because this is hard to debug without the actual code. Try solutions in this thread? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3523409/domdocument-encoding-problems-characters-transformed — Hanlet Escaño, Jun 18 '13 at 22:16
@HanletEscaño I can pastebin the actual code, or upload the file somewhere — The Last Melody, Jun 18 '13 at 22:17
let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/31975/discussion-between-hanlet-escano-and-the-last-melody) — Hanlet Escaño, Jun 18 '13 at 22:18

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 18 '13 at 22:53

Have you made sure your MySQL connection is always UTF8?

mysql_connect("localhost", "root", "") or die(mysql_error()) ;
// make sure we're in UTF8 mode!
mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'");
mysql_query("SET CHARACTER SET 'utf8'");
// continue
mysql_select_db("altabotanikk") or die(mysql_error()) ;

Then take it from there?

Even if your HTML has a meta tag for charset utf8, you'll need some more work. Incidentally, the new format for html5 (rather than the now-outdated html4.01) is:

<!doctype html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    ...
  </head>
  <body>...</body>
</html>

The mysql connection also needs to be told that everything is in UTF8. And then for good measure, you also want to make sure your script itself (the .php file) is saved as a unicode file, because yes, that too can mess things up (fun times!)

Thank you, this caused the "random" issue to disappear, now it only displays the wierd characters, so now I just have to correct the characters in the DB, Thanks ^_^ — The Last Melody, Jun 18 '13 at 23:10

ÆØÅ Letters randomly being replaced by Ã¦Ã˜Ã¥

1 Answers1