json_encode of special chars from a MySQL database

Question

I need to encode a result from a MySQL query to JSON format.

My database is in the encoding utf8_unicode_ci.

In particular, I have some special chars (for example, €) stored in my database which produce a null value when I apply the PHP function json_encode.

How can I fix this?

Related: [How to keep json_encode() from dropping strings with invalid characters](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4663743/how-to-keep-json-encode-from-dropping-strings-with-invalid-characters) — Pekka, Apr 26 '11 at 09:06

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

6

My blind guess is that your MySQL database connection is not set to UTF-8, which leads to ISO-8859-1 characters being returned even if the source database is UTF-8.

Those characters will break json_encode() because they are invalid in the UTF-8 character set, which json_encode() expects.

You will probably have to set your connection encoding to UTF-8. How to do that depends on the library you are using.

In the mysql_* family of functions, one way is

mysql_query("SET names utf8;");

or in MySQL > 5.0.7, the new

mysql_set_charset("utf8");

edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

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answered Apr 26 '11 at 09:08

Pekka

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thanks. I try to set charset with function "mysql_set_charset" but now he truncate the special chars – Dany Apr 26 '11 at 09:25
@Dany did you try the first one? – Pekka Apr 26 '11 at 09:25
yes, I try it! I try also to apply the php function iconv but it truncate the special chars – Dany Apr 26 '11 at 14:36

json_encode of special chars from a MySQL database

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