UTF-8 character encoding battles json_encode()
- by Dave Jarvis
Quest
I am looking to fetch rows that have accented characters. The encoding for the column (NAME) is latin1_swedish_ci.
The Code
The following query returns Abord â Plouffe using phpMyAdmin:
SELECT C.NAME FROM CITY C
WHERE C.REGION_ID=10 AND C.NAME_LOWERCASE LIKE '%abor%'
ORDER BY C.NAME LIMIT 30
The following displays expected values (function is called db_fetch_all( $result )):
while( $row = mysql_fetch_assoc( $result ) ) {
foreach( $row as $value ) {
echo $value . " ";
$value = utf8_encode( $value );
echo $value . " ";
}
$r[] = $row;
}
The displayed values: 5482 5482 Abord â Plouffe Abord â Plouffe
The array is then encoded using json_encode:
$rows = db_fetch_all( $result );
echo json_encode( $rows );
Problem
The web browser receives the following value:
{"ID":"5482","NAME":null}
Instead of:
{"ID":"5482","NAME":"Abord â Plouffe"}
(Or the encoded equivalent.)
Question
The documentation states that json_encode() works on UTF-8. I can see the values being encoded from LATIN1 to UTF-8. After the call to json_encode(), however, the value becomes null.
How do I make json_encode() encode the UTF-8 values properly?
One possible solution is to use the Zend Framework, but I'd rather not if it can be avoided.
