Special chars & UTF-8: sometimes ok, sometimes wrong

Hi.

Working with PHP 4.4 and mySQL 4.1, I've got some texts stored in a
UTF-8 table with special chars.

I serve a UTF-8 header within my HTML, Apache is configured to serve
UTF-8 and PHP scripts are saved in UTF-8 charset.

However, sometimes I get 'Espa=F1a' and other times 'Espa�a'. The
difference? I press F5 (Refresh) bottom on my web browser (I use
Firefox and Internet Explorer).

This is the first time I experience this issue.

When I have suffered problems with special chars I use utf8_decode or
utf8_encode, but I always try to store text data in UTF-8 charset and
serve them always with UTF-8 PHP scripts.

However, this is a very odd issue, since it happens only with text
taken from DataBase, but not from texts written in scripts :(

Any similar experience?

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RE: Special chars & UTF-8: sometimes ok, sometimes wrong

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Re[2]: Special chars & UTF-8: sometimes ok, sometimes wrong

>> I serve a UTF-8 header within my HTML, Apache is configured to ser=
ve
>> UTF-8 and PHP scripts are saved in UTF-8 charset.
>> However, this is a very odd issue, since it happens only with text
>> taken from DataBase, but not from texts written in scripts :(
>>
>> Any similar experience?

yes, it depends of the translation between tables and html pages.
I manage frequently standard configurations in Apache for Spanish
websites. On my view, it's better not changing the Apache
configuration. Instead that, be focused in having a latin_set=20
characters in your Mysql tables, in example latin1_swedish_ci.

As a guide, when I open phpMyAdmin, I have my tables with
latin1_swedish_ci in where appears España. Then, having the HTML
pages with CONTENT=3D"text/html;charset=3Dutf-8"> it works without problems.

You can use use the PHP utf8_decode() function but it will be a hard
work for all variables in the whole site.
If you are now in a mess, I recommend you putting the Apache
configuration in the standard way. Restart, and load your HTML page,
changing the page codification using UTF and ISO-8859-1.
In this way, you can know what codification demands your HTML page to
show DB dates in a right way according the actual state of you tables.

If still you are not able to see the characters in any way, then you
can export and re-import your tables choosing a latin1_set and then
problem will be solved using UTF-8 in the HTML pages.

But if you change Apache configuration, it can interfere with other
previous scripts or tables, I don't recommend you.
It is my experience.

Hope it helps,


Vicente,

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