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    utf8_decode

    (PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

    utf8_decode — Converts a string from UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1, replacing invalid or unrepresentable characters

    Avviso

    This function has been DEPRECATED as of PHP 8.2.0. Relying on this function is highly discouraged.

    Descrizione

    utf8_decode(string $string): string

    This function converts the string string from the UTF-8 encoding to ISO-8859-1. Bytes in the string which are not valid UTF-8, and UTF-8 characters which do not exist in ISO-8859-1 (that is, code points above U+00FF) are replaced with ?.

    Nota:

    Many web pages marked as using the ISO-8859-1 character encoding actually use the similar Windows-1252 encoding, and web browsers will interpret ISO-8859-1 web pages as Windows-1252. Windows-1252 features additional printable characters, such as the Euro sign (€) and curly quotes (“ ”), instead of certain ISO-8859-1 control characters. This function will not convert such Windows-1252 characters correctly. Use a different function if Windows-1252 conversion is required.

    Elenco dei parametri

    string

    A UTF-8 encoded string.

    Valori restituiti

    Returns the ISO-8859-1 translation of string.

    Log delle modifiche

    Versione Descrizione
    8.2.0 This function has been deprecated.
    7.2.0 This function has been moved from the XML extension to the core of PHP. In previous versions, it was only available if the XML extension was installed.

    Esempi

    Example #1 Basic examples

    <?php
    // Convert the string 'Zoë' from UTF-8 to ISO 8859-1
    $utf8_string = "\x5A\x6F\xC3\xAB";
    $iso8859_1_string = utf8_decode($utf8_string);
    echo     bin2hex($iso8859_1_string), "\n";

    // Invalid UTF-8 sequences are replaced with '?'
    $invalid_utf8_string = "\xC3";
    $iso8859_1_string = utf8_decode($invalid_utf8_string);
    var_dump($iso8859_1_string);

    // Characters which don't exist in ISO 8859-1, such as
    // '€' (Euro Sign) are also replaced with '?'
    $utf8_string = "\xE2\x82\xAC";
    $iso8859_1_string = utf8_decode($utf8_string);
    var_dump($iso8859_1_string);
    ?>

    Il precedente esempio visualizzerà:

    5a6feb
string(1) "?"
string(1) "?"

    Note

    Nota: Deprecation and alternatives

    This function is deprecated as of PHP 8.2.0, and will be removed in a future version. Existing uses should be checked and replaced with appropriate alternatives.

    Similar functionality can be achieved with mb_convert_encoding(), which supports ISO-8859-1 and many other character encodings.

    <?php
    $utf8_string     = "\xC3\xAB"; // 'ë' (e with diaeresis) in UTF-8
    $iso8859_1_string = mb_convert_encoding($utf8_string, 'ISO-8859-1', 'UTF-8');
    echo     bin2hex($iso8859_1_string), "\n";

    $utf8_string = "\xCE\xBB"; // 'λ' (Greek lower-case lambda) in UTF-8
    $iso8859_7_string = mb_convert_encoding($utf8_string, 'ISO-8859-7', 'UTF-8');
    echo     bin2hex($iso8859_7_string), "\n";

    $utf8_string = "\xE2\x82\xAC"; // '€' (Euro sign) in UTF-8 (not present in ISO-8859-1)
    $windows_1252_string = mb_convert_encoding($utf8_string, 'Windows-1252', 'UTF-8');
    echo     bin2hex($windows_1252_string), "\n";
    ?>

    Il precedente esempio visualizzerà:

    eb
eb
80

    Other options which may be available depending on the extensions installed are UConverter::transcode() and iconv().

    The following all give the same result:

    <?php
    $utf8_string     = "\x5A\x6F\xC3\xAB"; // 'Zoë' in UTF-8
    $iso8859_1_string = utf8_decode($utf8_string);
    echo     bin2hex($iso8859_1_string), "\n";

    $iso8859_1_string = mb_convert_encoding($utf8_string, 'ISO-8859-1', 'UTF-8');
    echo     bin2hex($iso8859_1_string), "\n";

    $iso8859_1_string = iconv('UTF-8', 'ISO-8859-1', $utf8_string);
    echo     bin2hex($iso8859_1_string), "\n";

    $iso8859_1_string = UConverter::transcode($utf8_string, 'ISO-8859-1', 'UTF8');
    echo     bin2hex($iso8859_1_string), "\n";
    ?>

    Il precedente esempio visualizzerà:

    5a6feb
5a6feb
5a6feb
5a6feb
    Specifying '?' as the 'to_subst' option to UConverter::transcode() gives the same result as utf8_decode() for strings which are invalid or which can not be represented in ISO 8859-1.
    <?php
    $utf8_string     = "\xE2\x82\xAC"; // € (Euro Sign) does not exist in ISO 8859-1
    $iso8859_1_string = UConverter::transcode(
    $utf8_string, 'ISO-8859-1', 'UTF-8', ['to_subst' => '?']
    );
    var_dump($iso8859_1_string);
    ?>

    Il precedente esempio visualizzerà:

    sring(1) "?"

    Vedere anche:

    add a note add a note

    User Contributed Notes 33 notes

    up
    9
    deceze at gmail dot com
    13 years ago
    Please note that utf8_decode simply converts a string encoded in UTF-8 to ISO-8859-1. A more appropriate name for it would be utf8_to_iso88591. If your text is already encoded in ISO-8859-1, you do not need this function. If you don't want to use ISO-8859-1, you do not need this function.

    Note that UTF-8 can represent many more characters than ISO-8859-1. Trying to convert a UTF-8 string that contains characters that can't be represented in ISO-8859-1 to ISO-8859-1 will garble your text and/or cause characters to go missing. Trying to convert text that is not encoded in UTF-8 using this function will most likely garble the text.

    If you need to convert any text from any encoding to any other encoding, look at iconv() instead.
    up
    7
    info at vanylla dot it
    15 years ago
    IMPORTANT: when converting UTF8 data that contains the EURO sign DON'T USE utf_decode function.

    utf_decode converts the data into ISO-8859-1 charset. But ISO-8859-1 charset does not contain the EURO sign, therefor the EURO sign will be converted into a question mark character '?'

    In order to convert properly UTF8 data with EURO sign you must use:

    iconv("UTF-8", "CP1252", $data)
    up
    5
    gabriel arobase gabsoftware dot com
    13 years ago
    If you want to retrieve some UTF-8 data from your database, you don't need utf8_decode().

    Simply do the following query before any SELECT :

    $result = mysql_query("SET NAMES utf8");
    up
    4
    Aidan Kehoe <php-manual at parhasard dot net>
    20 years ago
    The fastest way I've found to check if something is valid UTF-8 is
    <?php
    if (iconv('UTF-8', 'UTF-8', $input) != $input) {
                /* It's not UTF-8--for me, it's probably CP1252, the Windows
               version of Latin 1, with directed quotation marks and
               the Euro sign.  */
    }
    ?>.
    The iconv() C library fails if it's told a string is UTF-8 and it isn't; the PHP one doesn't, it just returns the conversion up to the point of failure, so you have to compare the result to the input to find out if the conversion succeeded.
    up
    3
    lukasz dot mlodzik at gmail dot com
    16 years ago
    Update to MARC13 function utf2iso()
    I'm using it to handle AJAX POST calls.
    Despite using
    http.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'; charset='utf-8');
    it still code Polish letters using UTF-16

    This is only for Polish letters:

    <?php
    function utf16_2_utf8 ($nowytekst) {
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0104','Ą',$nowytekst);    //Ą
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0106','Ć',$nowytekst);    //Ć
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0118','Ę',$nowytekst);    //Ę
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0141','Ł',$nowytekst);    //Ł
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0143','Ń',$nowytekst);    //Ń
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u00D3','Ó',$nowytekst);    //Ó
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u015A','Ś',$nowytekst);    //Ś
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0179','Ź',$nowytekst);    //Ź
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u017B','Ż',$nowytekst);    //Ż
          
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0105','ą',$nowytekst);    //ą
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0107','ć',$nowytekst);    //ć
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0119','ę',$nowytekst);    //ę
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0142','ł',$nowytekst);    //ł
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u0144','ń',$nowytekst);    //ń
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u00F3','ó',$nowytekst);    //ó
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u015B','ś',$nowytekst);    //ś
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u017A','ź',$nowytekst);    //ź
                $nowytekst = str_replace('%u017C','ż',$nowytekst);    //ż
           return ($nowytekst);
       }   
    ?>

    Everything goes smooth, but it doesn't change '%u00D3','Ó' and '%u00F3','ó'. I dont have idea what to do with that.

    Remember! File must be saved in UTF-8 coding.
    up
    3
    sam
    17 years ago
    In addition to yannikh's note, to convert a hex utf8 string

    <?php

    echo utf8_decode("\x61\xc3\xb6\x61");
    // works as expected

    $abc="61c3b661";
    $newstr = "";
    $l = strlen($abc);
    for (    $i=0;$i<$l;$i+=2){
            $newstr .= "\x".$abc[$i].$abc[$i+1];
    }
    echo     utf8_decode($newstr);
    // or varieties  of "\x": "\\x" etc does NOT output what you want

    echo utf8_decode(pack('H*',$abc));
    // this outputs the correct string, like the first line.

    ?>
    up
    1
    Aleksandr
    7 years ago
    In addition to note by yannikh at gmeil dot com, another way to decode strings with non-latin chars from unix console like

    C=RU, L=\xD0\x9C\xD0\xBE\xD1\x81\xD0\xBA\xD0\xB2\xD0\xB0,

    <?php preg_replace_callback('/\\\\x([0-9A-F]{2})/', function($a){ return pack('H*', $a[1]); }, $str); ?>

    The code above will output:
    C=RU, L=Москва,
    up
    1
    jamalmarlone at gmail dot com
    1 year ago
    $string = "Bjørn Johansen";

    echo mb_convert_encoding($string, 'ISO-8859-1', 'UTF-8');

    ----
    prints: "Bjørn Johansen"
    up
    1
    christoffer
    12 years ago
    The preferred way to use this on an array would be with the built in PHP function "array_map()", as for example:
    $array = array_map("utf8_decode", $array);
    up
    0
    kode68
    8 years ago
    Update Answer from okx dot oliver dot koenig at gmail dot com for PHP 5.6 since e/ modifier is depreciated

    // This finally helped me to do the job, thanks to Blackbit, had to modify deprecated ereg:
    // original comment: "Squirrelmail contains a nice function in the sources to convert unicode to entities:"

    function charset_decode_utf_8($string)
        {
            /* Only do the slow convert if there are 8-bit characters */
            if ( !preg_match("/[\200-\237]/", $string) && !preg_match("/[\241-\377]/", $string) )
                   return $string;

            // decode three byte unicode characters
              $string = preg_replace_callback("/([\340-\357])([\200-\277])([\200-\277])/",
                        create_function ('$matches', 'return \'&#\'.((ord($matches[1])-224)*4096+(ord($matches[2])-128)*64+(ord($matches[3])-128)).\';\';'),
                        $string);

            // decode two byte unicode characters
              $string = preg_replace_callback("/([\300-\337])([\200-\277])/",
                        create_function ('$matches', 'return \'&#\'.((ord($matches[1])-192)*64+(ord($matches[2])-128)).\';\';'),
                        $string);

            return $string;
        }

    Enjoy
    up
    0
    sashott at gmail dot com
    9 years ago
    Use of utf8_decode was not enough for me by get page content from another site. Problem appear by different alphabet from standard latin. As example some chars (corresponding to HTML codes &bdquo; , &nbsp; and others) are converted to "?" or "xA0" (hex value). You need to make some conversion before execute utf8_decode. And you can not replace simple, that they can be part of 2 bytes code for a char (UTF-8 use 2 bytes). Next is for cyrillic alphabet, but for other must be very close.

    function convertMethod($text){
        //Problem is that utf8_decode convert HTML chars for &bdquo; and other to ? or &nbsp; to \xA0. And you can not replace, that they are in some char bytes and you broke cyrillic (or other alphabet) chars.
        $problem_enc=array(
            'euro',
            'sbquo',
            'bdquo',
            'hellip',
            'dagger',
            'Dagger',
            'permil',
            'lsaquo',
            'lsquo',
            'rsquo',
            'ldquo',
            'rdquo',
            'bull',
            'ndash',
            'mdash',
            'trade',
            'rsquo',
            'brvbar',
            'copy',
            'laquo',
            'reg',
            'plusmn',
            'micro',
            'para',
            'middot',
            'raquo',
            'nbsp'
        );
        $text=mb_convert_encoding($text,'HTML-ENTITIES','UTF-8');
        $text=preg_replace('#(?<!\&ETH;)\&('.implode('|',$problem_enc).');#s','--amp{$1}',$text);
        $text=mb_convert_encoding($text,'UTF-8','HTML-ENTITIES');
        $text=utf8_decode($text);
        $text=mb_convert_encoding($text,'HTML-ENTITIES','UTF-8');
        $text=preg_replace('#\-\-amp\{([^\}]+)\}#su','&$1;',$text);
        $text=mb_convert_encoding($text,'UTF-8','HTML-ENTITIES');
        return $text;
    }

    If this don't work, try to set "die($text);" on some places to look, what is happen to this row. Is better to test with long text. It is very possible to broke other alphabet character. In this case, it is very possible, that for you alphabet set "&ETH;" is not the right one. You need to set "die($text);" after this preg_replace and look HTML code for character before set "--amp".
    up
    0
    punchivan at gmail dot com
    16 years ago
    EY! the bug is not in the function 'utf8_decode'. The bug is in the function 'mb_detect_encoding'. If you put a word with a special char at the end like this 'accentué', that will lead to a wrong result (UTF-8) but if you put another char at the end like this 'accentuée' you will get it right. So you should always add a ISO-8859-1 character to your string for this check. My advise is to use a blank space.
    I´ve tried it and it works!

    function ISO_convert($array)
    {
        $array_temp = array();
        
        foreach($array as $name => $value)
        {
            if(is_array($value))
              $array_temp[(mb_detect_encoding($name." ",'UTF-8,ISO-8859-1') == 'UTF-8' ? utf8_decode($name) : $name )] = ISO_convert($value);
            else
              $array_temp[(mb_detect_encoding($name." ",'UTF-8,ISO-8859-1') == 'UTF-8' ? utf8_decode($name) : $name )] = (mb_detect_encoding($value." ",'UTF-8,ISO-8859-1') == 'UTF-8' ? utf8_decode($value) : $value );
        }

        return $array_temp;
    }
    up
    0
    ludvig dot ericson at gmail dot com
    17 years ago
    A better way to convert would be to use iconv, see http://www.php.net/iconv -- example:

    <?php
    $myUnicodeString     = "Åäö";
    echo     iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1", $myUnicodeString);
    ?>

    Above would echo out the given variable in ISO-8859-1 encoding, you may replace it with whatever you prefer.

    Another solution to the issue of misdisplayed glyphs is to simply send the document as UTF-8, and of course send UTF-8 data:

    <?php
    # Replace text/html with whatever MIME-type you prefer.
    header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8");
    ?>
    up
    0
    luka8088 at gmail dot com
    17 years ago
    simple UTF-8 to HTML conversion:

    function utf8_to_html ($data)
        {
        return preg_replace("/([\\xC0-\\xF7]{1,1}[\\x80-\\xBF]+)/e", '_utf8_to_html("\\1")', $data);
        }

    function _utf8_to_html ($data)
        {
        $ret = 0;
        foreach((str_split(strrev(chr((ord($data{0}) % 252 % 248 % 240 % 224 % 192) + 128) . substr($data, 1)))) as $k => $v)
            $ret += (ord($v) % 128) * pow(64, $k);
        return "&#$ret;";
        }

    Example:
    echo utf8_to_html("a b č ć ž こ に ち わ ()[]{}!#$?*");

    Output:
    a b &#269; &#263; &#382; &#12371; &#12395; &#12385; &#12431; ()[]{}!#$?*
    up
    0
    alexlevin at kvadro dot net
    17 years ago
    If you running Gentoo Linux and encounter problems with some PHP4 applications saying:
    Call to undefined function: utf8_decode()
    Try reemerge PHP4 with 'expat' flag enabled.
    up
    0
    php-net at ---NOSPAM---lc dot yi dot org
    18 years ago
    I've just created this code snippet to improve the user-customizable emails sent by one of my websites.

    The goal was to use UTF-8 (Unicode) so that non-english users have all the Unicode benefits, BUT also make life seamless for English (or specifically, English MS-Outlook users).  The niggle: Outlook prior to 2003 (?)  does not properly detect unicode emails.  When "smart quotes" from MS Word were pasted into a rich text area and saved in Unicode, then sent by email to an Outlook user, more often than not, these characters were wrongly rendered as "greek".

    So, the following code snippet replaces a few strategic characters into html entities which Outlook XP (and possibly earlier) will render as expected.  [Code based on bits of code from previous posts on this and the htmlenties page]
    <?php
        $badwordchars    =array(
                "\xe2\x80\x98", // left single quote
                "\xe2\x80\x99", // right single quote
                "\xe2\x80\x9c", // left double quote
                "\xe2\x80\x9d", // right double quote
                "\xe2\x80\x94", // em dash
                "\xe2\x80\xa6" // elipses
            );
            $fixedwordchars=array(
                "&#8216;",
                "&#8217;",
                '&#8220;',
                '&#8221;',
                '&mdash;',
                '&#8230;'
            );
            $html=str_replace($badwordchars,$fixedwordchars,$html);
    ?>
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    0
    thierry.bo # netcourrier point com
    19 years ago
    In response to fhoech (22-Sep-2005 11:55), I just tried a simultaneous test with the file UTF-8-test.txt using your regexp, 'j dot dittmer' (20-Sep-2005 06:30) regexp (message #56962), `php-note-2005` (17-Feb-2005 08:57) regexp in his message on `mb-detect-encoding` page (http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.mb-detect-encoding.php#50087) who is using a regexp from the W3C (http://w3.org/International/questions/qa-forms-utf-8.html), and PHP mb_detect_encoding function.

    Here are a summarize of the results :

    201 lines are valid UTF8 strings using phpnote regexp
    203 lines are valid UTF8 strings using j.dittmer regexp
    200 lines are valid UTF8 strings using fhoech regexp
    239 lines are valid  UTF8 strings using using mb_detect_encoding

    Here are the lines with differences (left to right, phpnote, j.dittmer and fhoech) :

    Line #70 : NOT UTF8|IS UTF8!|IS UTF8! :2.1.1 1 byte (U-00000000): ""
    Line #79 : NOT UTF8|IS UTF8!|IS UTF8! :2.2.1 1 byte (U-0000007F): ""
    Line #81 : IS UTF8!|IS UTF8!|NOT UTF8 :2.2.3 3 bytes (U-0000FFFF): "&#65535;" |
    Line #267 : IS UTF8!|IS UTF8!|NOT UTF8 :5.3.1 U+FFFE = ef bf be = "&#65534;" |
    Line #268 : IS UTF8!|IS UTF8!|NOT UTF8 :5.3.2 U+FFFF = ef bf bf = "&#65535;" |

    Interesting is that you said that your regexp corrected j.dittmer regexp that failed on 5.3 section, but it my test I have the opposite result ?!

    I ran this test on windows XP with PHP 4.3.11dev. Maybe these differences come from operating system, or PHP version.

    For mb_detect_encoding I used the command :

    mb_detect_encoding($line, 'UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, ASCII');
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    0
    j dot dittmer at portrix dot net
    19 years ago
    The regex in the last comment has some typos. This is a
    syntactically valid one, don't know if it's correct though.
    You've to concat the expression in one long line.

    ^(
    [\x00-\x7f]|
    [\xc2-\xdf][\x80-\xbf]|
    [\xe0][\xa0-\xbf][\x80-\xbf]|
    [\xe1-\xec][\x80-\xbf]{2}|
    [\xed][\x80-\x9f][\x80-\xbf]|
    [\xee-\xef][\x80-\xbf]{2}|
    [\xf0][\x90-\xbf][\x80-\xbf]{2}|
    [\xf1-\xf3][\x80-\xbf]{3}|
    [\xf4][\x80-\x8f][\x80-\xbf]{2}
    )*$
    up
    0
    rasmus at flajm dot se
    19 years ago
    If you don't have the multibyte extension installed, here's a function to decode UTF-16 encoded strings. It support both BOM-less and BOM'ed strings, (big- and little-endian byte order.)

    <?php
    /**
    * Decode UTF-16 encoded strings.
    *
    * Can handle both BOM'ed data and un-BOM'ed data.
    * Assumes Big-Endian byte order if no BOM is available.
    *
    * @param   string  $str  UTF-16 encoded data to decode.
    * @return  string  UTF-8 / ISO encoded data.
    * @access  public
    * @version 0.1 / 2005-01-19
    * @author  Rasmus Andersson {@link http://rasmusandersson.se/}
    * @package Groupies
    */
    function utf16_decode( $str ) {
        if(     strlen($str) < 2 ) return $str;
            $bom_be = true;
            $c0 = ord($str{0});
            $c1 = ord($str{1});
        if(     $c0 == 0xfe && $c1 == 0xff ) { $str = substr($str,2); }
        elseif(     $c0 == 0xff && $c1 == 0xfe ) { $str = substr($str,2); $bom_be = false; }
            $len = strlen($str);
            $newstr = '';
        for(    $i=0;$i<$len;$i+=2) {
            if(     $bom_be ) { $val = ord($str{$i})   << 4; $val += ord($str{$i+1}); }
            else {            $val = ord($str{$i+1}) << 4; $val += ord($str{$i}); }
                $newstr .= ($val == 0x228) ? "\n" : chr($val);
        }
        return     $newstr;
    }
    ?>
    up
    -1
    okx dot oliver dot koenig at gmail dot com
    9 years ago
    // This finally helped me to do the job, thanks to Blackbit, had to modify deprecated ereg:
    // original comment: "Squirrelmail contains a nice function in the sources to convert unicode to entities:"

    function charset_decode_utf_8 ($string) {
        /* Only do the slow convert if there are 8-bit characters */
        /* avoid using 0xA0 (\240) in ereg ranges. RH73 does not like that */
        if (!preg_match("/[\200-\237]/", $string)
         && !preg_match("/[\241-\377]/", $string)
        ) {
            return $string;
        }

        // decode three byte unicode characters
        $string = preg_replace("/([\340-\357])([\200-\277])([\200-\277])/e",
            "'&#'.((ord('\\1')-224)*4096 + (ord('\\2')-128)*64 + (ord('\\3')-128)).';'",
            $string
        );

        // decode two byte unicode characters
        $string = preg_replace("/([\300-\337])([\200-\277])/e",
            "'&#'.((ord('\\1')-192)*64+(ord('\\2')-128)).';'",
            $string
        );

        return $string;
    }
    up
    -1
    Blackbit
    16 years ago
    Squirrelmail contains a nice function in the sources to convert unicode to entities:

    <?php
    function charset_decode_utf_8 ($string) {
              /* Only do the slow convert if there are 8-bit characters */
        /* avoid using 0xA0 (\240) in ereg ranges. RH73 does not like that */
            if (! ereg("[\200-\237]", $string) and ! ereg("[\241-\377]", $string))
            return     $string;

            // decode three byte unicode characters
            $string = preg_replace("/([\340-\357])([\200-\277])([\200-\277])/e",        \
            "'&#'.((ord('\\1')-224)*4096 + (ord('\\2')-128)*64 + (ord('\\3')-128)).';'",    \
            $string);

            // decode two byte unicode characters
            $string = preg_replace("/([\300-\337])([\200-\277])/e", \
            "'&#'.((ord('\\1')-192)*64+(ord('\\2')-128)).';'", \
            $string);

        return     $string;
    }
    ?>
    up
    -1
    visus at portsonline dot net
    17 years ago
    Following code helped me with mixed (UTF8+ISO-8859-1(x)) encodings. In this case, I have template files made and maintained by designers who do not care about encoding and MySQL data in utf8_binary_ci encoded tables.

    <?php

    class Helper
    {
        function     strSplit($text, $split = 1)
        {
            if (!    is_string($text)) return false;
            if (!    is_numeric($split) && $split < 1) return false;

                $len = strlen($text);

                $array = array();

                $i = 0;

            while (    $i < $len)
            {
                    $key = NULL;

                for (    $j = 0; $j < $split; $j += 1)
                {
                        $key .= $text{$i};

                        $i += 1;
                }

                    $array[] = $key;
            }

            return     $array;
        }

        function     UTF8ToHTML($str)
        {
                $search = array();
                $search[] = "/([\\xC0-\\xF7]{1,1}[\\x80-\\xBF]+)/e";
                $search[] = "/&#228;/";
                $search[] = "/&#246;/";
                $search[] = "/&#252;/";
                $search[] = "/&#196;/";
                $search[] = "/&#214;/";
                $search[] = "/&#220;/";
                $search[] = "/&#223;/";

                $replace = array();
                $replace[] = 'Helper::_UTF8ToHTML("\\1")';
                $replace[] = "ä";
                $replace[] = "ö";
                $replace[] = "ü";
                $replace[] = "Ä";
                $replace[] = "Ö";
                $replace[] = "ü";
                $replace[] = "ß";

                $str = preg_replace($search, $replace, $str);

            return     $str;
        }

        function     _UTF8ToHTML($str)
        {
                $ret = 0;

            foreach((    Helper::strSplit(strrev(chr((ord($str{0}) % 252 % 248 % 240 % 224 % 192) + 128).substr($str, 1)))) as $k => $v)
                    $ret += (ord($v) % 128) * pow(64, $k);
            return     "&#".$ret.";";
        }
    }

    // Usage example:

    $tpl = file_get_contents("template.tpl");
    /* ... */
    $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);

    print(    Helper::UTF8ToHTML(str_replace("{VAR}", $row['var'], $tpl)));

    ?>
    up
    -1
    paul.hayes at entropedia.co.uk
    18 years ago
    I noticed that the utf-8 to html functions below are only for 2 byte long codes. Well I wanted 3 byte support (sorry haven't done 4, 5 or 6). Also I noticed the concatination of the character codes did have the hex prefix 0x and so failed with the large 2 byte codes)

    <?
          public function utf2html (&$str) {
       
            $ret = "";
            $max = strlen($str);
            $last = 0;  // keeps the index of the last regular character
            for ($i=0; $i<$max; $i++) {
                $c = $str{$i};
                $c1 = ord($c);
            if (    $c1>>5 == 6) {  // 110x xxxx, 110 prefix for 2 bytes unicode
                    $ret .= substr($str, $last, $i-$last); // append all the regular characters we've passed
                    $c1 &= 31; // remove the 3 bit two bytes prefix
                    $c2 = ord($str{++$i}); // the next byte
                    $c2 &= 63;  // remove the 2 bit trailing byte prefix
                    $c2 |= (($c1 & 3) << 6); // last 2 bits of c1 become first 2 of c2
                    $c1 >>= 2; // c1 shifts 2 to the right
                    $ret .= "&#" . ($c1 * 0x100 + $c2) . ";"; // this is the fastest string concatenation
                    $last = $i+1;      
            }
            elseif (    $c1>>4 == 14) {  // 1110 xxxx, 110 prefix for 3 bytes unicode
                    $ret .= substr($str, $last, $i-$last); // append all the regular characters we've passed
                    $c2 = ord($str{++$i}); // the next byte
                    $c3 = ord($str{++$i}); // the third byte
                    $c1 &= 15; // remove the 4 bit three bytes prefix
                    $c2 &= 63;  // remove the 2 bit trailing byte prefix
                    $c3 &= 63;  // remove the 2 bit trailing byte prefix
                    $c3 |= (($c2 & 3) << 6); // last 2 bits of c2 become first 2 of c3
                    $c2 >>=2; //c2 shifts 2 to the right
                    $c2 |= (($c1 & 15) << 4); // last 4 bits of c1 become first 4 of c2
                    $c1 >>= 4; // c1 shifts 4 to the right
                    $ret .= '&#' . (($c1 * 0x10000) + ($c2 * 0x100) + $c3) . ';'; // this is the fastest string concatenation
                    $last = $i+1;      
            }
        }
            $str=$ret . substr($str, $last, $i); // append the last batch of regular characters
    }
    ?>
    up
    -1
    MARC13
    17 years ago
    I did this function to convert data from AJAX call to insert to my database.
    It converts UTF-8 from XMLHttpRequest() to ISO-8859-2 that I use in LATIN2 MySQL database.

    <?php
    function utf2iso($tekst)
    {
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0104","\xA1",$tekst);    //Ą
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0106","\xC6",$nowytekst);    //Ć
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0118","\xCA",$nowytekst);    //Ę
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0141","\xA3",$nowytekst);    //Ł
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0143","\xD1",$nowytekst);    //Ń
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u00D3","\xD3",$nowytekst);    //Ó
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u015A","\xA6",$nowytekst);    //Ś
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0179","\xAC",$nowytekst);    //Ź
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u017B","\xAF",$nowytekst);    //Ż
           
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0105","\xB1",$nowytekst);    //ą
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0107","\xE6",$nowytekst);    //ć
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0119","\xEA",$nowytekst);    //ę
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0142","\xB3",$nowytekst);    //ł
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u0144","\xF1",$nowytekst);    //ń
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u00D4","\xF3",$nowytekst);    //ó
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u015B","\xB6",$nowytekst);    //ś
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u017A","\xBC",$nowytekst);    //ź
                $nowytekst = str_replace("%u017C","\xBF",$nowytekst);    //ż
           
            return ($nowytekst);
    }
    ?>

    In my case also the code file that deals with AJAX calls must be in UTF-8 coding.
    up
    -2
    Ajgor
    17 years ago
    small upgrade for polish decoding:

    function utf82iso88592($text) {
    $text = str_replace("\xC4\x85", 'ą', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC4\x84", 'Ą', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC4\x87", 'ć', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC4\x86", 'Ć', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC4\x99", 'ę', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC4\x98", 'Ę', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC5\x82", 'ł', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC5\x81", 'Ł', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC3\xB3", 'ó', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC3\x93", 'Ó', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC5\x9B", 'ś', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC5\x9A", 'Ś', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC5\xBC", 'ż', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC5\xBB", 'Ż', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC5\xBA", 'ż', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xC5\xB9", 'Ż', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xc5\x84", 'ń', $text);
    $text = str_replace("\xc5\x83", 'Ń', $text);

    return $text;
    } // utf82iso88592
    up
    -2
    gto at interia dot pl
    20 years ago
    Correction to function converting utf82iso88592 and iso88592tutf8.
    Janusz forgot about "&#324;", and "&#380;" exchanged from "&#378;" here and there.

    GTo

    function utf82iso88592($tekscik) {
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC4\x85", "&#261;", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC4\x84", '&#260;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC4\x87", '&#263;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC4\x86", '&#262;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC4\x99", '&#281;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC4\x98", '&#280;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC5\x82", '&#322;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC5\x81", '&#321;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC5\x84", '&#324;', $tekscik);    
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC5\x83", '&#323;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC3\xB3", '?', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC3\x93", '?', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC5\x9B", '&#347;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC5\x9A", '&#346;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC5\xBC", '&#380;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC5\xBB", '&#379;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC5\xBA", '&#378;', $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace("\xC5\xB9", '&#377;', $tekscik);
         return $tekscik;
    } // utf82iso88592

    function iso885922utf8($tekscik) {
         $tekscik = str_replace("&#261;", "\xC4\x85", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#260;', "\xC4\x84", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#263;', "\xC4\x87", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#262;', "\xC4\x86", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#281;', "\xC4\x99", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#280;', "\xC4\x98", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#322;', "\xC5\x82", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#321;', "\xC5\x81", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#324;', "\xC5\x84", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#323;',"\xC5\x83", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('?', "\xC3\xB3", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('?', "\xC3\x93", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#347;', "\xC5\x9B", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#346;', "\xC5\x9A", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#380;', "\xC5\xBC", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#379;', "\xC5\xBB", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#378;', "\xC5\xBA", $tekscik);
         $tekscik = str_replace('&#377;', "\xC5\xB9", $tekscik);    
         return $tekscik;
    } // iso885922utf8
    up
    -3
    2ge at NO2geSPAM dot us
    18 years ago
    Hello all,

    I like to use COOL (nice) URIs, example: http://example.com/try-something
    I'm using UTF8 as input, so I have to write a function UTF8toASCII to have nice URI. Here is what I come with:

    <?php
    function urlize($url) {
    $search = array('/[^a-z0-9]/', '/--+/', '/^-+/', '/-+$/' );
    $replace = array( '-', '-', '', '');
    return     preg_replace($search, $replace, utf2ascii($url));
    }    

    function     utf2ascii($string) {
    $iso88591  = "\\xE0\\xE1\\xE2\\xE3\\xE4\\xE5\\xE6\\xE7";
    $iso88591 .= "\\xE8\\xE9\\xEA\\xEB\\xEC\\xED\\xEE\\xEF";
    $iso88591 .= "\\xF0\\xF1\\xF2\\xF3\\xF4\\xF5\\xF6\\xF7";
    $iso88591 .= "\\xF8\\xF9\\xFA\\xFB\\xFC\\xFD\\xFE\\xFF";
    $ascii = "aaaaaaaceeeeiiiidnooooooouuuuyyy";
    return     strtr(mb_strtolower(utf8_decode($string), 'ISO-8859-1'),$iso88591,$ascii);
    }

    echo     urlize("Fucking ?m?l");

    ?>

    I hope this helps someone.
    up
    -5
    haugas at gmail dot com
    16 years ago
    If you don't know exactly, how many times your string is encoded, you can use this function:

    <?php

    function _utf8_decode($string)
    {
          $tmp = $string;
          $count = 0;
      while (    mb_detect_encoding($tmp)=="UTF-8")
      {
            $tmp = utf8_decode($tmp);
            $count++;
      }
     
      for (    $i = 0; $i < $count-1 ; $i++)
      {
            $string = utf8_decode($string);
       
      }
      return     $string;
     
    }

    ?>
    up
    -3
    yannikh at gmeil dot com
    18 years ago
    I had to tackle a very interesting problem:

    I wanted to replace all \xXX in a text by it's letters. Unfortunatelly XX were ASCII and not utf8. I solved my problem that way:
    <?php preg_replace ('/\\\\x([0-9a-fA-F]{2})/e', "pack('H*',utf8_decode('\\1'))",$v); ?>
    up
    -2
    Sadi
    17 years ago
    Once again about polish letters. If you use fananf's solution, make sure that PHP file is coded with cp1250 or else it won't work. It's quite obvious, however I spent some time before I finally figured that out, so I thought I post it here.
    up
    -4
    fhoech
    19 years ago
    Sorry, I had a typo in my last comment. Corrected regexp:

    ^([\\x00-\\x7f]|
    [\\xc2-\\xdf][\\x80-\\xbf]|
    \\xe0[\\xa0-\\xbf][\\x80-\\xbf]|
    [\\xe1-\\xec][\\x80-\\xbf]{2}|
    \\xed[\\x80-\\x9f][\\x80-\\xbf]|
    \\xef[\\x80-\\xbf][\\x80-\\xbd]|
    \\xee[\\x80-\\xbf]{2}|
    \xf0[\\x90-\\xbf][\\x80-\\xbf]{2}|
    [\\xf1-\\xf3][\\x80-\\xbf]{3}|
    \\xf4[\\x80-\\x8f][\\x80-\\xbf]{2})*$
    up
    -4
    tobias at code-x dot de
    18 years ago
    converting uft8-html sign &#301; to uft8

    <?
    function uft8html2utf8( $s ) {
            if ( !    function_exists('uft8html2utf8_callback') ) {
                 function     uft8html2utf8_callback($t) {
                             $dec = $t[1];
                if (    $dec < 128) {
                      $utf = chr($dec);
                } else if (    $dec < 2048) {
                      $utf = chr(192 + (($dec - ($dec % 64)) / 64));
                      $utf .= chr(128 + ($dec % 64));
                } else {
                      $utf = chr(224 + (($dec - ($dec % 4096)) / 4096));
                      $utf .= chr(128 + ((($dec % 4096) - ($dec % 64)) / 64));
                      $utf .= chr(128 + ($dec % 64));
                }
                return     $utf;
                 }
            }                               
            return     preg_replace_callback('|&#([0-9]{1,});|', 'uft8html2utf8_callback', $s );                                
    }
    echo     uft8html2utf8('test: &#301;');
    ?>
    up
    -8
    fhoech
    19 years ago
    JF Sebastian's regex is almost perfect as far as I'm concerned. I found one error (it failed section 5.3 "Other illegal code positions" from http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/UTF-8-test.txt) which I corrected as follows:

    ^([\\x00-\\x7f]|
    [\\xc2-\\xdf][\\x80-\\xbf]|
    \\xe0[\\xa0-\\xbf][\\x80-\\xbf]|
    [\\xe1-\\xec][\\x80-\\xbf]{2}|
    \\xed[\\x80-\\x9f][\\x80-\\xbf]|
    \\xef[\\x80-\\xbf][\\x80-\\xbc]|
    \\xee[\\x80-\\xbf]{2}|
    \\xf0[\\x90-\\xbf][\\x80-\\xbf]{2}|
    [\\xf1-\\xf3][\\x80-\\xbf]{3}|
    \\xf4[\\x80-\\x8f][\\x80-\\xbf]{2})*$

    (Again, concatenate to one single line to make it work)
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