PHP + MySQL encoding issues for Portuguese (PT-Br)

Question

I'm developing a website in Brazilian Portuguese and I'm facing some really annoying encoding problems.

Words that should be written this way: óbito are being written this way: �bito

I have noticed that while the texts are still at the database they are ok. But when I use echo with PHP, the encoding problem comes up.

List of things I have already done and did not help:

1- Set the PHP files to be saved as UTF-8

2- I'm using this meta tag <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

3- I used this SQL Queries:

CREATE DATABASE db_name
    CHARACTER SET utf8
    DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8
    COLLATE utf8_general_ci
    DEFAULT COLLATE utf8_general_ci
    ;

ALTER DATABASE db_name
    CHARACTER SET utf8
    DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8
    COLLATE utf8_general_ci
    DEFAULT COLLATE utf8_general_ci
    ;

ALTER TABLE tbl_name
    DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8
    COLLATE utf8_general_ci
    ;

Is the browser encoding automatically set to UTF-8 when you load the page? — quantumSoup, Jul 17 '10 at 21:50
If not, does it display the text correctly when you change your browser's encoding to UTF-8? — quantumSoup, Jul 17 '10 at 21:50
Yes. The browser automatically set to UTF-8 when I load the page. — rlc, Jul 17 '10 at 21:58
@Aircule: The presence of `�` is a good sign that it’s already internpreted as UTF-8. Because that character is used to denote corrupt byte sequences. — Gumbo, Jul 17 '10 at 21:59
@Rafael Carvalho: I guess your data in your data base is already corrupted. You could try some hexadecimal dump like `SELECT HEX(columnname) FROM …` to see the hexadecimal representation. — Gumbo, Jul 17 '10 at 22:00
What if you change your browser's encoding to ISO-8859-1 (Latin 1 aka Western)? — quantumSoup, Jul 17 '10 at 22:00
@Gumbo the results are 5265636F6D70656E7361206D65726563696461 , 4156414C4F4E2048494748 and stuff like that. @Aircule When I change to ISO-8895-1 there's no problem about these `�` . But this problem comes up: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3242762/i-enconding-issue — rlc, Jul 17 '10 at 22:05
@Rafael Carvalho: For what value is that the dump? Please select a short and easy example value or just take a sub-string. — Gumbo, Jul 17 '10 at 22:13
Those results don't tell us anything, because they are from strings that just have regular ASCII chars (where ISO-8859-1 is encoded the same as UTF-8). Try a dump on string that have characters with accents (ie: óbito) — quantumSoup, Jul 17 '10 at 22:15
@Gumbo "Recompensa merecida" and "AVALON HIGH" respectively. — quantumSoup, Jul 17 '10 at 22:17
@Gumbo, @Aircule. Sorry for that. result: 417465737461646F20646520C3B36269746F <--> Atestado de óbito other example: 43726570C3BA7363756C6F <--> Crepúsculo — rlc, Jul 17 '10 at 22:17
Well, that is valid UTF-8 (ie: it's not corrupt in the database). Maybe you are doing some string manipulation in PHP after retrieving it from the DB? — quantumSoup, Jul 17 '10 at 22:28
@Rafael Carvalho: Well, the data seems to be correct in this case. Then I guess your session/connection settings are wrong. Try to execute these statements to see the current charset/collation settings: `SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set%'; SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation%';` — Gumbo, Jul 17 '10 at 22:33
@Gumbo Probably it's that: collation_connection utf8_unicode_ci collation_database utf8_general_ci collation_server latin1_swedish_ci How do I solve this? — rlc, Jul 17 '10 at 22:43
See "question mark" and "black diamond" in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38363566/trouble-with-utf8-characters-what-i-see-is-not-what-i-stored — Rick James, Jan 05 '19 at 23:15

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 25 '11 at 06:49

5

Dont try to reinvent the wheel, keep things simple: just use the following line after selecting the database:

mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'") OR die(mysql_error());

answered Feb 25 '11 at 06:49

Shahid Karimi

4,096
17
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quantumSoup · Accepted Answer · 2010-07-17T23:29:24.130

You can change the charset using this function:

$q = mysql_set_charset('utf8');
var_dump($q);

(if the function returns true it's been successful). This should fix your problems for the connection.

For older versions of PHP, you can use the following:

<?php
 if (function_exists('mysql_set_charset') === false) {
     /**
      * Sets the client character set.
      *
      * Note: This function requires MySQL 5.0.7 or later.
      *
      * @see http://www.php.net/mysql-set-charset
      * @param string $charset A valid character set name
      * @param resource $link_identifier The MySQL connection
      * @return TRUE on success or FALSE on failure
      */
     function mysql_set_charset($charset, $link_identifier = null)
     {
         if ($link_identifier == null) {
             return mysql_query('SET NAMES "'.$charset.'"');
         } else {
             return mysql_query('SET NAMES "'.$charset.'"', $link_identifier);
         }
     }
 }
 ?>

It seems like PHP uses latin1 by default and I can't find a way to change the default. So I guess you'll have to use mysql_set_charset() every time you start a new connection.

Boa Sorte.

I'd say not `'You can'` but `'you` **have** `to tell mysql what encoding you are using'.` the rest is perfect. — Your Common Sense, Jul 17 '10 at 23:38

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 21 '12 at 07:09

1

Mine is solved by putting:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

in the header of the page, besides creating the tables again and changing the collation of database to utf-8 encoding.

edited Sep 21 '12 at 07:09

the Tin Man

158,662
42
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answered Sep 20 '12 at 09:56

Sanaan Barzinji

31
1

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 05 '12 at 06:43

0

Use this for Portuguese :

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=pt-BR" />

answered Nov 05 '12 at 06:43

Harshal

3,562
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Ali Nawaz · Answer 5 · 2013-02-06T10:49:28.227

0

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

Putting above meta tag inside <head> tag of your html/php document.

And you also need to run this query mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'"); in your main functions file if you are using MySQL database with PHP.

edited Feb 06 '13 at 10:49

answered Feb 06 '13 at 10:31

Ali Nawaz

1,006
10
11

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 31 '20 at 05:22

Is solved by Putting: After the database connection string

$con = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'root', 'password', 'testdb');
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
    exit("Failed to connect to MySQL: " . mysqli_connect_error());
}
mysqli_set_charset($con, 'utf8');

PHP + MySQL encoding issues for Portuguese (PT-Br)

6 Answers6

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