PHP: Converting Unicode strings to ANSI strings

Question

~~Does PHP have any standard function(s) to convert Unicode strings to plain, good old-fashioned ANSI strings (or whatever format PHP's htmlentities understands?~~

Is there any function that converts UTF-8 strings to HTML that can be understood by the most popular browsers?

It isn't like my software will be used by some random guy in Japan. We know our market. — isekaijin
– isekaijin, Commented Jan 14, 2011 at 13:27
Why not just keep everything (web page, database tables, connection and collation, etc.) in UTF-8? Even if you don't take advantage of any non-ASCII characters you'd at least have a consistent approach. — John Parker
– John Parker, Commented Jan 14, 2011 at 13:33

Christian Kuetbach · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-14 13:30:17Z

7

This can't work properly. Stored with Unicode there are many more Characters than with ANSI. So if you "convert" to ANSI, you will loose lots of charackters.

http://php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php

You can use Unicode (UTF-8) charset with htmlentities:

string htmlentities ( string $string [, int $flags = ENT_COMPAT [, string $charset [, bool $double_encode = true ]]] )

htmlentities($myString, ENT_COMPAT, "UTF-8"); should work.

answered Jan 14, 2011 at 13:30

Christian Kuetbach

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2 Comments

isekaijin Over a year ago

Wow. I didn't know that was possible. I thought htmlentities only accepted one parameter.

isekaijin Over a year ago

Is there any function that converts á to &aacute, for example?

John Parker · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-14 13:38:19Z

7

Whilst I'd really recommend keeping everything in UTF-8 (as per my comment on the question), you can use the mb_convert_encoding function to convert any known UTF-8 string to US-ASCII as such:

$asciiString = mb_convert_encoding ($sourceString, 'US-ASCII', 'UTF-8');

However, this may not be a lossless conversion depending on the source character string. (Characters such as "é" will simply disappear into the void.)

answered Jan 14, 2011 at 13:38

John Parker

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Comments

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-14 13:48:45Z

1

Browsers already understand UTF-8. If you want them to know that you're sending them UTF-8 then you need to tell them.

answered Jan 14, 2011 at 13:48

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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2 Comments

isekaijin Over a year ago

Does IE6 understand UTF-8? Some of the viewers of my Web site might be using it.

dan04 Over a year ago

Yes, it does. However, it doesn't auto-detect UTF-8, so make sure to declare the Content-Type appropriately.

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