CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phppythonmysqlapacheutf-8
Susan Mayer
Susan Mayer

Reputation: 333

PHP for Python Programmers: UTF-8 Issues

I have an open source PHP website and I intend to modify/translate (mostly constant strings) it so it can be used by Japanese users.

The original code is PHP+MySQL+Apache and written in English with charset=utf-8

I want to change, for example, the word "login" into Japanese counterpart "ログイン" etc

I am not sure whether I have to save the PHP code in utf-8 format (just like Python)?

I only have experience with Python, so what other issues I should take care of?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 164

Answers (3)

Francis Avila
Francis Avila

Reputation: 31641

I'm sorry you have to use PHP after using Python.

PHP has no concept of character sets: all strings are binary, even in parsed php code, so if you include a UTF-8 multibyte character in a php string, make sure the bytes in the code file are UTF-8 bytes.

You will need to be extremely careful with the use of string functions at all levels of your application. You also need to make sure your MySQL connection is set to use UTF-8 (using SET NAMES or the charset dsn parameter in later versions of PDO), and that your mysql string column datatypes use utf-8 storage.

Upvotes: 0

Corbin
Corbin

Reputation: 33457

If it's in the file, then yes, you will need to save the file as UTF-8.

If it's is in the database, you do not need to save the PHP file as UTF-8.

In PHP, strings are basically just binary blobs. You will need to save the file as UTF-8 so the correct bytes are read in. In theory, if you saved the raw bytes in an ANSI file, it would still be output to the browser correctly, just your editor would not display it correctly, and you would run the risk of your editor manipulating it incorrectly.

Also, when handling non-ANSI strings, you'll need to be careful to use the multi-byte versions of string manipulation functions (str_replace will likely botch a utf-8 string for example).

Upvotes: 2

flurry
flurry

Reputation: 506

If the file contains UTF-8 characters then save it with UTF-8. Otherwise you can save it in any format. One thing you should be aware of is that the PHP interpreter does not support the UTF-8 byte order mark so make sure you save it without that.

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions