How Can I Fix Garbled Characters (like \'î\') Caused by Malformed UTF-8 Encoding in PHP and MySQL?

Correcting Malformed UTF-8 Encoding

In PHP 5 and MySQL environments, corrupted UTF-8 encoding can manifest as garbled characters like "î". To rectify this issue, consider employing the following strategies:

Addressing the Database Collation:

• Ensure that the database collation is set to "utf8_general_ci" or a similar UTF-8-compatible collation.

Verifying PHP Configuration:

• Confirm that the PHP script includes an appropriate UTF-8 header, such as "Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8".

Checking Text Editor Settings:

• Set Notepad to use UTF-8 encoding without the Byte Order Mark (BOM).

Mapping Corrupted Characters:

• Create a customized function that identifies and replaces corrupted character sequences (e.g., "î") with their correct UTF-8 equivalents.

Utilizing Database Dump/Restore:

• Perform a full database dump using the following command:

mysqldump -h DB_HOST -u DB_USER -p DB_PASSWORD --opt --quote-names \
    --skip-set-charset --default-character-set=latin1 DB_NAME > DB_NAME-dump.sql

• Restore the database using the following command:

mysql -h DB_HOST -u DB_USER -p DB_PASSWORD \
    --default-character-set=utf8 DB_NAME <p>Note that this solution is most effective for cases of double-encoded UTF-8 characters (e.g., smart quotes, dashes, etc.). It is essential to verify the specific character encoding issues in your case before applying any fixes.</p>

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