file_get_html returning bizarre symbols

Question

$html = file_get_html("http://www.vegasinsider.com/mlb/odds/las-vegas/?s=316");

echo $html;

$html is returned as a bunch of strnage symbols that include vۺ�(

I though that using:

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

would help, but it didn't. Any suggestions?

What character encoding is it on your page? The page you linked to has ISO-8859-1. — bestprogrammerintheworld, May 17 '13 at 06:46
The character encoding isn't specified on my page. It's not html. It's strictly php. — Lance, May 17 '13 at 06:47
@Lance, yes ok it's php, but output must have some encoding. If you haven't defined it explicitly it would still have some character-encoding (that is set default). Can you see the character-encoding of the source php-code? (through your ide) — bestprogrammerintheworld, May 17 '13 at 06:50
@Lance - My guess is that your php-source-file is utf8 and the external link is iso-8859-1. That might be why the strange characters are shown when outputted to the browswer because php uses utf8. — bestprogrammerintheworld, May 17 '13 at 06:52
I tried this with no luck. echo mb_convert_encoding($html, 'UTF-8'); — Lance, May 17 '13 at 06:55

mpyw · Answer 1 · 2013-05-17T07:13:58.337

0

Try this:

$url = 'http://www.vegasinsider.com/mlb/odds/las-vegas/?s=316';
$html = str_get_html(utf8_encode(file_get_contents($url)));

echo $html;

edited May 17 '13 at 07:13

answered May 17 '13 at 07:05

mpyw

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@Lance Edited. How about this? – mpyw May 17 '13 at 07:14

Val · Answer 2 · 2013-05-17T07:44:00.550

0

Try this one

$encoded = htmlentities(utf8_encode(file_get_html('yoururl')));
echo $encoded;

It will convert the special characteres to HTML entity.

Please see the doc here.

edited May 17 '13 at 07:44

answered May 17 '13 at 07:24

Val

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Doesn't echo anything. It's just a plain white page. – Lance May 17 '13 at 07:34
var_dump returns string(0) – Lance May 17 '13 at 07:39
Please try my edit, I added `utf8_encode` function inside `htmlentities`. – Val May 17 '13 at 07:44
Corrupted page content ? You really should "force" all page to be UTF-8 so. – Val May 17 '13 at 07:58
How can I force the page to be UTF-8? – Lance May 17 '13 at 07:59
Look at [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7809931/how-to-force-utf-8-encoding-in-browser) for example.. Encode your database as UTF-8, and in all your pages `header('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8');` – Val May 17 '13 at 08:04
I have that header at the top of my page. I mentioned that in the question. – Lance May 17 '13 at 08:06
And I mentioned in **ALL** your pages. So, the pages you're requesting with `file_get_html` and the page which call that function. – Val May 17 '13 at 08:10
Well, if the page I'm requesting doesn't have the charset to UTF-8, does that mean I should just try a different URL? – Lance May 17 '13 at 08:13
Nope, but that's always boring to work with some different encodings.. Btw, please look at the code of Wordpress, some months ago I found code which converts all characters (accents, specials one, etc) but I don't have the time to find it out now.. That could maybe solve your problem! – Val May 17 '13 at 08:24

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 12 '14 at 21:38

0

file_get_contents is screwy sometimes. Change the code in simple_html_dom.php to use gzopen instead. Under file_get_html()

//$contents = file_get_contents($url, $use_include_path, $context, $offset);

//get the contents of the page
$fp = gzopen($url,'r');

$contents = '';

while($html = gzread($fp , 256000))
{
    $contents .= $html;
}

gzclose($fp);

edited Jun 12 '14 at 21:38

Guillermo Gutiérrez

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answered Jun 12 '14 at 21:16

user3735710

1

file_get_html returning bizarre symbols

3 Answers3