How Can I Properly Store and Display Hindi (हिन्दी) Text Using PHP and MySQL?

Storing and Displaying Unicode Strings (हिन्दी) Using PHP and MySQL

Unicode encoding allows for the representation of multilingual characters, making it crucial for handling diverse text data. This guide addresses the challenges encountered when storing and displaying Hindi (हिन्दी) text using MySQL and PHP.

Problem Formulation

The question highlights the issues faced when attempting to store and display Hindi text. The text displayed as "??????'' on the webpage, despite being stored correctly in the database. The underlying problem lies in the discrepancies between the character encoding in the database and the output in the webpage.

Solution Implementation

To resolve this problem, it is essential to specify the correct character encoding throughout the process. This includes setting the database encoding, table field encoding, and ensuring the webpage uses the appropriate encoding.

The provided PHP script effectively demonstrates this by setting the MySQL character set to UTF-8, which allows for the proper handling of Unicode characters. The script also retrieves and displays Hindi text from the database, ensuring its correct rendering in the webpage.

Further Considerations

In addition to the character encoding, other factors can influence the display of Unicode strings. These include:

• Ensuring HTML header contains the correct character encoding
• Setting the MIME type to text/html; charset=UTF-8 in PHP scripts

Understanding the Script's Functionality

The provided script includes a command to set the character set to UTF-8: mysql_query("SET NAMES utf8"). This ensures that all subsequent operations, such as selecting data, are executed using the UTF-8 encoding. The script then retrieves data from the hindi table and displays it using the echo function, which automatically handles the character encoding.

By setting the correct character encoding at various stages, the script enables the seamless storage, retrieval, and display of Hindi text. It eliminates the issues faced earlier, such as the display of question marks.

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