PHP - format special characters and display

Question

I can see that htmlspecialchars() or htmlentities() convert special characters like & " to & " which isn't quite I am looking for.

My database table stores text articles that when I fetch and display, anything that contains special characters do not display in a readable format.

Any PHP (Codeigniter) function that accomplishes this?

Added

Sorry for not being so clear about my question. My case is that I have a word it's and this displays as itâ€™s

What *are* you looking for then? What problem do you have exactly? What characters do you define as "special"? — deceze, Aug 14 '13 at 11:32
@deceze it can be any of those special characters. I cannot simply pick one or two as any variery can come up in the future. Thanks for your input. — Seong Lee, Aug 14 '13 at 11:39
I recommend this article for reference: http://kunststube.net/encoding/. — Expedito, Aug 14 '13 at 11:41
Wait a minute... Your *special* characters (`&` and `"`) are only special in HTML context—they're encoded exactly the same in all popular encodings. Why isn't `htmlspecialchars()` what you are looking for? — Álvaro González, Aug 14 '13 at 11:41
@ÁlvaroG.Vicario using htmlspecialchars("&") will give me `&`. My case is that I have `it's` and this displays like `itâ€™s`. `` solved it! — Seong Lee, Aug 14 '13 at 11:45
Why didn't you say so in the question?! http://stackoverflow.com/questions/279170/utf-8-all-the-way-through — deceze, Aug 14 '13 at 11:46
Right, then it's a dupe after all. Too bad you cannot vote again after retracting a vote. Whatever, printing a literal `&` as `&` will generate **invalid HTML**. — Álvaro González, Aug 14 '13 at 11:48
Sorry for the confusion. I edited my question so it is a bit clearer. — Seong Lee, Aug 14 '13 at 11:51

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 14 '13 at 11:44

2

Perhaps you should check the charset of your output. For example use <meta charset="UTF-8"> in your html-document. [reference].

edited Aug 14 '13 at 11:44

Hashem Qolami

answered Aug 14 '13 at 11:35

bastey

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 14 '13 at 11:32

-1

Try base64_encode() it.

$newStr = base64_encode("some texrt");

And by read, use base64_decode().

Set your mysql database to utf8:

SET NAMES utf8

answered Aug 14 '13 at 11:32

m1k1o

2 Answers2