CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysqlutf-8
Josh Mountain
Josh Mountain

Reputation: 1950

Displaying foreign characters from a MySQL database

I have a MySQL database that has certain unconventional character stored in it such as é, ▲, █▓░✌, ᄼᄽᄾ etc.

When I query them from the DB and attempt to display them on the webpage they simply show up as a ? even though I have the following metatag in place: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> and the DB collation is set to utf8_general_ci

How can I display these characters properly? Do they need to be stored in a different way inside the DB?

note: the characters are readable inside the DB, but not when I display them on the page.

The Solution

Adding this into my dbconnect file solved my problem.

/* change character set to utf8 */
if (!$mysqli->set_charset("utf8")) {
    printf("Error loading character set utf8: %s\n", $mysqli->error);
} else {
    printf("Current character set: %s\n", $mysqli->character_set_name());
}

Upvotes: 0

Views: 242

Answers (1)

haltabush
haltabush

Reputation: 4528

The easiest way to fix this issue is to call the query "SET NAMES utf8" before accessing your utf8 charecters from DB

Upvotes: 1

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