How to set encoding in PHP

PHP is a very popular server-side scripting language, but many beginners often encounter the problem of garbled Chinese characters. This problem is largely caused by incorrect default encoding settings. In this article, we will discuss why the default encoding is very important for writing Chinese web pages in PHP, and also explore how PHP sets the encoding.

1. Why the default encoding is very important for PHP to write Chinese web pages

When PHP first runs, it does not know the encoding type of the web page file. Therefore, if you use Chinese characters in a PHP script or read a Chinese web page, PHP will try to guess the default encoding type. If the encoding type guessed by PHP does not match the actual encoding type, then the problem of garbled Chinese characters will occur.

For example, if you use the UTF-8 encoding type and PHP guesses that the file is GBK encoded, PHP will regard UTF-8 encoded Chinese characters as GBK encoded characters, resulting in garbled characters. In this case, even using the correct character encoding will not solve the problem because PHP cannot guess the accuracy of the character encoding type.

In PHP, you can set the character encoding in three ways:

1) By setting it in the tag of the web page:

Chinese title

This is a Chinese content.

2) By setting the HTTP header:

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

3) Set by using the function in the PHP script:

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 ');
mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8");

2. The correct way to set the encoding in PHP

Although the above three methods can set the encoding, There is a best way. We can use PHP's mb_ function. (The mb_ function is a collection of PHP's multi-byte string functions, which can be used to handle character sets in various languages, including Chinese characters)

We recommend using the mb_* function to set the encoding, because This ensures that the character encoding type is set to the correct type and can correctly handle any language's character set.

The following is a sample code for setting encoding in PHP:

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');
mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8");

echo "


< title>Chinese web page

Chinese title

This is a Chinese content .

";
?>

By using the mb_* functions to set the encoding, we can ensure that our PHP scripts can correctly handle the character set of any language, thereby avoiding the problem of garbled Chinese characters.

Overall, correct encoding settings are very important, especially when our scripts need to handle Chinese characters. If you have just started learning PHP or are not sure how to set the character encoding type, then we strongly recommend that you learn the correct encoding setting method first. This reduces time-wasting hassles caused by small structural errors and improves user experience.

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