Character missing when saving a row?

Question

$userTb = new My_Tb_User();  //Child of Zend_Db_Table_Abstract
$row = $userTb->find(9)->current();
$row->name = 'STÖVER';
$row->save();

Inside user table at row 9 for name column value ST gets stored instead of STÖVER ?

Ö is a german character supported in UTF-8 . IF I enter manually 'STÖVER' using phpmyadmin it get stored correctly .

I also passed charset parameter with value utf8 when creating db adapter but still no luck !

Just a guess: what if you try: `$row->name = utf8_encode('STÖVER');` — Alain Tiemblo, Dec 19 '12 at 06:29
use mysql_real_escape_string() at the time of inserting into db — Daya, Dec 19 '12 at 06:36
@Ninsuo your guess solved my problem but I would like to know why ? — Learner, Dec 19 '12 at 06:51
@soul its already in utf-8 also its not database charset problem otherwise entering the value through phpmyadmin would have not worked correctly . — Learner, Dec 19 '12 at 06:53
The PHP default encoding is latin1 (iso8859-1), you need to set it to utf8 in your php.ini file, `default_charset = "UTF-8"`. Else, your php file will not be read as utf-8. — Alain Tiemblo, Dec 19 '12 at 06:59
@Ninsuo setting `ini_set('default_charset',"UTF-8")` and removing utf8_encode() did not work as I again got ST saved in database. — Learner, Dec 19 '12 at 07:07

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

3

If you read the manual entry for utf8_encode, it converts an ISO-8859-1 encoded string to UTF-8. The function name is a horrible misnomer, as it suggests some sort of automagic encoding that is necessary. That is not the case. If your source code is saved as UTF-8 and you assign "STÖVER" to $string, then $string holds the character "STÖVER" encoded in UTF-8. No further action is necessary. In fact, trying to convert the UTF-8 string (incorrectly) from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 will garble it.

utf8_encode('STÖVER');

check this question in stackoverflow

edited May 23 '17 at 12:12

Community

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answered Dec 19 '12 at 07:00

Ghostman

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Good quote there. Not sure what it has to do with the question though. – deceze Dec 19 '12 at 07:35

Alain Tiemblo · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-19T07:53:19.623

2

This is a bad practice to use utf8_encode, this adds a lot of complexity to your app. Try to solve the problem by looking for the source.

Ssome thoughts :

a database server charset problem (check encoding of your server)
a database client charset problem (check encoding of your connection)
a database table charset problem (check encoding of your table)
a php default encoding problem (check default_encoding parameter in parameters.ini)
a multibyte missconfigured (see mb_string parameters in parameters.ini)
a <form> charset problem (check that it is sent as utf-8)
a <html> charset problem (where no enctype is set in your html file)
a Content-encoding: problem (where the wrong encoding is sent by Apache).

edited Dec 19 '12 at 07:53

answered Dec 19 '12 at 07:10

Alain Tiemblo

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PHP doesn't "read files as" a certain encoding. It reads them as binary blob and doesn't care about encodings. – deceze Dec 19 '12 at 07:36
You're right, I read again manual, this parameter only modifies the `Content-type` header. Thanks for pointing that out. – Alain Tiemblo Dec 19 '12 at 07:52

Character missing when saving a row?

2 Answers2