PHP: strange string encoding in $_GET

Question

I have the following string sent to the server by a client:

3%D3%E1f%7C%AF%B0a%B58%81%92%F9M%90%0CD%A0Y%9C // string in the actual URL
3Óáf|¯°aµ8’ùMD Yœ // var_dump($_GET)

The original string should be:

33D3E1667CAFB061B5388192F94D900C44A0599C

My problem is that I can't figure out how to encode/decode this so I can peform a database search because the collation type does not match. I have tried to urlencode/urldecode, mb_string_convert, utf8_encode, iconv, but without luck. Any ideas ?

Laravel throws the following exception when trying to use the string for searching:

'SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1267 Illegal mix of collations (latin1_swedish_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,COERCIBLE)...

I have no control of what the client's encoding is. The strange value is from logging it to a log file using Laravel's Log::imfo()

@SugumarVenkatesan: this is not an attack, it is me testing. he thing is I need that data in the original value. — Comforse
– Comforse, Commented Dec 31, 2015 at 13:49
@MichaelBerkowski: the client is a bittorrent client and the sent parameter is an info_hash one. The request is sent and received via GET, and I don't think that it can be changed. — Comforse
– Comforse, Commented Dec 31, 2015 at 14:01

Jonas Hoffmann · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-31 13:54:32Z

2

Have you tried sending a post request instead of a get request, and send the string as the actual string.

Or maybe change your database encoding to UTF-8 (it handles swedish just fine, no need to choose latin-swedish version).

answered Dec 31, 2015 at 13:54

Jonas Hoffmann

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Comforse Over a year ago

Changing the database collation fixes part of the problem, namely the exception. The initial problem is solved by calling bin2hex(), as specified in my answer.

Comforse · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-31 14:06:05Z

1

The solution is to retrieve the parameter with the bin2hex() function call.

answered Dec 31, 2015 at 14:06

Comforse

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