php json_encode "Malformed UTF-8 characters, possibly incorrectly encoded"

Question

I'm creating my db on real server but I've two big problem

1) json_encode function return "Malformed UTF-8 characters, possibly incorrectly encoded"; 2) when I fix the first problem, Japanese character is returned as '?' question mark.

but if I run same php code in localhost MAMP server, all works with success; without error.

this is PHP file

<?php
header("Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *");
header("Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8");

include_once("../objects/radicale.php");
include_once("../../database/database.php");

$radicaleObj = new Radicale();

$stmt = $radicaleObj->read();
$num = $stmt->num_rows;

if($num > 0){
    $radicaliArray = array();
    while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($stmt)){
        extract($row);

        //JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE
        echo(utf8_encode($row[1]));//<-This is the Japanese character that is returned as '?'
        $age=array("Radicale"=>$radicale ,"concettoITA"=>"$concetto_ITA","Joe"=>"43");
//$concetto_ITA is the column row name extracted by extract() function and is reason of the first error
        array_push($radicaliArray, $age);
    }
    echo(mb_convert_encoding($radicale,"UTF-8","auto"));
    //echo json_encode($radicaliArray, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE|JSON_PARTIAL_OUTPUT_ON_ERROR|JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES);
    echo json_encode($radicaliArray);
     // Print out the error if any
    echo json_last_error_msg();
    die(); // halt the script
}
?>

The character coding is utf8_general_ci both MAMP Localhost server and Netson server' database.

Can you help me? I don't know what I have to do to fix this problem.

If you need information, ask.

Thank you very much

`utf8_encode` is for `ISO-8859-1` encoded strings. I don't think a japanese character exists in that char set. — user3783243, Dec 28 '19 at 16:26

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 29 '19 at 04:00

2

MySQL and PHP need to be handling the same character set which is "UTF-8", please check whether you have implemented it by adding:

mysqli_set_charset($connection, "utf8");

after connect to the database. Another way is you can try encoding to EUC-JP or SHIFT-JIS as follow:

mb_convert_encoding("日本語", 'UTF-8', array('EUC-JP', 'SHIFT-JIS', 'AUTO'));

edited Dec 29 '19 at 04:00

Gabriele Quatela

190
3
21

answered Dec 28 '19 at 16:27

Gerry

101
1
7

thank you very much for your answer. I needed to set the charset with mysql_set_charset() function. now all works. Thank you – Gabriele Quatela Dec 28 '19 at 18:38
You should _not_ use the `mysql_*` API; only the `mysqli_*` API. – Rick James Dec 29 '19 at 05:05

php json_encode "Malformed UTF-8 characters, possibly incorrectly encoded"

1 Answers1