Php text encode

Question

I have this some code that will auto generate a string but some of the special characters is shown like: �

Code:

header("Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8");
function RandomString($length = 10){
    $chars ='0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzåäöABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÅÄÖ!#¤%&()=?@£$€{}[]+';
    $randString = '';
    for($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++){
        $randString .= $chars[rand(0, 88)];
    }
    echo $randString;
    return $randString;
}

Are you trying to "Encode" "Encrypt" or "Hash" the string.. there is a big difference between the three. — Orel Eraki
– Orel Eraki, Commented Jan 25, 2015 at 18:10
@OrelEraki how do you think that function is meant to encrypt or hash something? Clearly, this is a question about character encoding. — user1544337
– user1544337, Commented Jan 25, 2015 at 18:17
php has no notion of your string being a string with utf8 characters - A string is series of characters, where a character is the same as a byte. This means that PHP only supports a 256-character set, and hence does not offer native Unicode support. - see php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php and especially the details of the string type. — jeroen
– jeroen, Commented Jan 25, 2015 at 18:17
The encoding of your source file must also be UTF-8 to work this code. And you should use special "Unicode" function to extract i-th character from string (cause some characters requires two or more bytes). — Mark Shevchenko
– Mark Shevchenko, Commented Jan 25, 2015 at 18:18
@OrelEraki the function is called RandomString. Guess what it does. — user1544337
– user1544337, Commented Jan 25, 2015 at 18:34

kokx · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-25 18:26:27Z

3

There are a few characters in your $chars array, that are multibyte characters (UTF-8 to be precise). Unfortunately, PHP doesn't handle multibyte characters that well on its own.

A solution here, is to replace all the calls with a variant that supports multibyte characters. The mbstring extension provides such support.

You can replace a call as $chars[rand(0,88)] by a call to the mb_substr function. So you get something like mb_substr($chars, rand(0, 88), 1).

answered Jan 25, 2015 at 18:26

kokx

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1 Comment

Olof Over a year ago

mb_substr($chars, rand(0,88),1,'utf8'); made the job.

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