How to set PHP encoding to UTF-8

In web development, PHP is a powerful programming language that supports many functions and tasks. One of the important tasks is how to handle character encoding. In many cases, you may need to set the PHP encoding to UTF-8 to ensure that the text in your page displays correctly. This article will introduce how to set PHP encoding to UTF-8 and provide example code to help you complete this task.

1. Confirm that the server supports UTF-8 encoding

Before starting encoding, first confirm that your server supports UTF-8 encoding. Most modern web servers support UTF-8 encoding, but if your server doesn't, you'll need to contact your hosting provider.

2. Set encoding in PHP files

To set PHP encoding to UTF-8, add the following line at the beginning of each PHP file:

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

This code will tell the browser to read the page using UTF-8 encoding. If your website uses another character set, such as ISO-8859-1, you will need to change the character set in your code accordingly.

3. Set encoding in database

If your website needs to read characters from the database, you need to ensure that the database tables and columns are set to UTF-8 encoding. This is a very important step to ensure your text displays correctly.

To set the encoding of database tables and columns, use the CREATE TABLE statement. Example:

CREATE TABLE mytable (
id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
title VARCHAR(30) CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci NOT NULL,
body TEXT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci NOT NULL
)

In the above code, we have used the "utf8_general_ci" specification, which is a common specification for UTF-8. Make sure your coding conventions match those of the content you're encoding.

4. Handling Input and Output

When handling user input and output, you need to ensure that any user input is stored under UTF-8 encoding and that your page output Also UTF-8 encoded. Here is some sample code:

a. Processing input:

$input = $_POST['input'];
$input = mb_convert_encoding($input, "UTF-8", "auto");

In the above code, we used the mb_convert_encoding function to convert the input to UTF-8 encoding.

b. Processing output:

$output = "This is some text to output.";
echo mb_convert_encoding($output, "UTF-8", "auto");

In the above code, we use the mb_convert_encoding function to convert the output to UTF-8 encoding.

Summary

In website construction, how to correctly handle character encoding is very important. Before setting PHP encoding to UTF-8, first confirm that your server supports UTF-8 encoding, and then set the encoding at the beginning of each PHP file. Make sure your database tables and columns are also set to UTF-8 encoding, and use the mb_convert_encoding function to convert encodings when processing input and output. By following these steps, you can ensure that your pages display text correctly and make your site more accessible and usable in different locales.

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