How to decode MySQL text with PHP?

Question

How in this example I can encode text from MySQL?

This is how the text look like in MySQL using utf8mb4_unicode_ci: $text = 'Wiesław';

I have tried so far:

header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1");

echo htmlentities($text);
echo '</br>';
echo html_entity_decode($text);
echo '</br>';
echo htmlspecialchars_decode($text);
echo '</br>';
echo htmlspecialchars_decode($text, ENT_NOQUOTES);
echo '</br>';
echo utf8_encode($text);
echo '</br>';
echo utf8_decode($text);
echo '</br>';
echo mb_convert_encoding($text, 'ISO-8859-1', 'UTF-8');
echo '</br>';
echo iconv('UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1', $text);
echo '</br>';
echo mb_convert_encoding($text, 'UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1');

Results:

Wies³aw
Wies³aw
Wies³aw
Wies³aw
Wies³aw
Wies?aw
Wies?aw

Wies³aw

Expectation:

Wiesław

Answer 1

Grrr.. Don't use any of those functions. Instead, configure MySQL correctly.

Good: utf8mb4_unicode_ci -- That's a "Collation"; it implies the CHARACTER SET utf8mb4.

• Have UTF-8 characters in the client. (Obviously, you do since you have a stoke-l).
• Tell MySQL that the client is using utf8mb4. It is best to do this when establishing the connection. PHP has mysqli and PDO. Details for each: http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/charcoll#php
• Declare the columns (and optionally the table and database) to be CHARACTER SET utf8mb4. Let's see SHOW CREATE TABLE to see if that is OK now.

If after doing that, you get

Wiesław  -- Mojibake
Wies?aw   -- question mark
Wies      -- truncation
Wies�aw   -- black diamond

Then go to Trouble with UTF-8 characters; what I see is not what I stored for further advice and debugging.

The hex should be 57 69 65 73 C582 61 77.
If you get 57 69 65 73 C385 E2809A 61 77, then you have "double encoding".

Answer 2

If you're text is coming in HTML format, the following command should work:

mb_convert_encoding($text, 'HTML-ENTITIES', 'UTF-8')); 

OR

mb_convert_encoding($html, 'HTML-ENTITIES', 'ISO-8859-1'));