CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpspecial-charactershtmlspecialchars
Phil Tune
Phil Tune

Reputation: 3305

How to display special characters in PHP

I've seen this asked several times, but not with a good resolution. I have the following string:

$string = "<p>Résumé</p>";

I want to print or echo the string, but the output will return <p>R�sum�</p>. So I try htmlspecialchars() or htmlentities() which outputs &lt;p&gt;R&eacute;sum&eacute;&lt;p&gt; and the browser renders &lt;p&gt;R&eacute;sum&eacute;&lt;p&gt;. I want it, obviously, to render this:

Résumé

And I'm using UTF-8:

header("Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8");

What am I missing here? Why do echo and print output a � for any special character? To clarify, the string is actually an entire HTML file stored in a database. The real-world application is not just that one small line.

Upvotes: 21

Views: 146820

Answers (10)

Mahesh
Mahesh

Reputation: 31

One of the best ways to do this is, change Collation in my SQL database.

step 1: Go to the Mysql database

step 2: Select the Text-based Row you want to get displayed (Eg., post or comments)

step 3: edit the row and select collation as below.

utf8mb4_unicode_ci

Make sure to change the collation of text rows whichever you want to display the special characters.

Sometimes htmlspecialchars_decode() or any other entity() doesn't convert your special chars to normal. So, the above method will definitely help.

Upvotes: 0

Phil Tune
Phil Tune

Reputation: 3305

After much banging-head-on-table, I have a bit better understanding of the issue that I wanted to post for anyone else who may have had this issue.

While the UTF-8 character set will display special characters on the client, the server, on the other hand, may not be so accomodating and would print special characters such as à and è as � and �.

To make sure your server will print them correctly, use the ISO-8859-1 charset:

<?php
    /*Just for your server-side code*/
    header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1');
?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8"><!-- Your HTML file can still use UTF-8-->
        <title>Untitled Document</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <?= "àè" ?>
    </body>
</html>

This will print correctly: àè

Edit (4 years later):

I have a little better understanding now. The reason this works is that the client (browser) is being told, through the response header(), to expect an ISO-8859-1 text/html file. (As others have mentioned, you can also do this by updating your .ini or .htaccess files.) Then, once the browser begins to parse that given file into the DOM, the output will obey any <meta charset=""> rule but keep your ISO characters intact.

Upvotes: 52

seantunwin
seantunwin

Reputation: 1768

The following worked for me when having a similar issue lately:

$str = iconv('iso-8859-15', 'utf-8', $str);

Upvotes: 0

Vikas Kandari
Vikas Kandari

Reputation: 1852

In PHP there is a pretty good function utf8_encode() to solve this issue.

echo utf8_encode("Résumé");

//will output Résumé instead of R�sum�

Check the official PHP page.

Upvotes: 5

Hafiz Ameer Hamza
Hafiz Ameer Hamza

Reputation: 522

This works for me. Try this one before the start of HTML. I hope it will also work for you.

<?php header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-15'); ?>
<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en-US">
<head>

Upvotes: 0

Milan Gajjar
Milan Gajjar

Reputation: 701

Try This

Input:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

<?php
$str = "This is some <b>bold</b> text.";
echo htmlspecialchars($str);
?>

<p>Converting &lt; and &gt; into entities are often used to prevent browsers from using it as an HTML element. <br />This can be especially useful to prevent code from running when users have access to display input on your homepage.</p>

</body>
</html>

Output:

This is some <b>bold</b> text.

Converting < and > into entities are often used to prevent browsers from using it as an HTML element. This can be especially useful to prevent code from running when users have access to display input on your homepage.

Upvotes: 0

quantme
quantme

Reputation: 3657

This works for me:

Create/edit .htaccess file with these lines:

AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
AddCharset UTF-8 .php

If you prefer create/edit php.ini:

default_charset = "utf-8"

Sources:

Upvotes: 0

Vincy Oommen
Vincy Oommen

Reputation: 75

$str = "Is your name O\'vins?";

// Outputs: Is your name O'vins? echo stripslashes($str);

Upvotes: 0

Justin Wood
Justin Wood

Reputation: 10041

You can have a mix of PHP and HTML in your PHP files... just do something like this...

<?php
$string = htmlentities("Résumé");
?>

<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<p><?= $string ?></p>
</body>
</html>

That should output Résumé just how you want it to.

If you don't have short tags enabled, replace the <?= $string ?> with <?php echo $string; ?>

Upvotes: 4

NightHawk
NightHawk

Reputation: 3681

So I try htmlspecialchars() or htmlentities() which outputs <p>Résumé<p> and the browser renders <p>Résumé<p>.

If you've got it working where it displays Résumé with <p></p> tags around it, then just don't convert the paragraph, only your string. Then the paragraph will be rendered as HTML and your string will be displayed within.

Upvotes: 1

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