Php/json: decode utf8?

Question

I store a json string that contains some (chinese ?) characters in a mysql database. Example of what's in the database:

normal.text.\u8bf1\u60d1.rest.of.text

On my PHP page I just do a json_decode of what I receive from mysql, but it doesn't display right, it shows things like "½±è§�"

I've tried to execute the "SET NAMES 'utf8'" query at the beginning of my file, didn't change anything. I already have the following header on my webpage:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

And of course all my php files are encoded in UTF-8.

Do you have any idea how to display these "\uXXXX" characters nicely?

Show us more of what exactly you're doing. echo json_decode('"\u8bf1\u60d1"'); should do the trick perfectly fine. — deceze
– deceze ♦, Commented Oct 10, 2011 at 23:24

John Carter · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-10 08:16:31Z

8

This seems to work fine for me, with PHP 5.3.5 on Ubuntu 11.04:

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"');
$json = '[ "normal.text.\u8bf1\u60d1.rest.of.text" ]';

$decoded = json_decode($json, true);

var_dump($decoded);

Outputs this:

array(1) {
  [0]=>
  string(31) "normal.text.诱惑.rest.of.text"
}

answered Oct 10, 2011 at 8:16

John Carter

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vstm · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-10 07:50:05Z

3

Unicode is not UTF-8!

$ echo -en '\x8b\xf1\x60\xd1\x00\n' | iconv -f unicodebig -t utf-8
诱惑

This is a strange "encoding" you have. I guess each character of the normal text is "one byte" long (US-ASCII)? Then you have to extract the \u.... sequences, convert the sequence in a "two byte" character and convert that character with iconv("unicodebig", "utf-8", $character) to an UTF-8 character (see iconv in the PHP-documentation). This worked on my side:

$in = "normal.text.\u8bf1\u60d1.rest.of.text";

function ewchar_to_utf8($matches) {
    $ewchar = $matches[1];
    $binwchar = hexdec($ewchar);
    $wchar = chr(($binwchar >> 8) & 0xFF) . chr(($binwchar) & 0xFF);
    return iconv("unicodebig", "utf-8", $wchar);
}

function special_unicode_to_utf8($str) {
    return preg_replace_callback("/\\\u([[:xdigit:]]{4})/i", "ewchar_to_utf8", $str);
}

echo special_unicode_to_utf8($in);

Otherwise we need more Information on how your string in the database is encoded.

answered Oct 10, 2011 at 7:50

vstm

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4 Comments

John Carter Over a year ago

The encoding is the result of json_encode() (or some other compatible encoder), json_decode() should be enough to convert it back.

vstm Over a year ago

@therefromhere: you are probably right, but shouldn't the JSON-encoder output valid Javascript? Because the quotes (") are missing its just text and not really JSON. A part from that, on my side json_decode also prints the correct result, just like in your answer.

John Carter Over a year ago

Indeed, I assume the question example is a snippet of a larger properly formatted JSON string.

deceze Over a year ago

-1 for overcomplicated solution. echo json_decode('"\u8bf1\u60d1"'); works perfectly fine. It's also not a "strange encoding", it's a perfectly fine Unicode code point encoding used in JSON.

troelskn · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-10 07:22:10Z

2

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

That's a red herring. If you serve your page over http, and the response contains a Content-Type header, then the meta tag will be ignored. By default, PHP will set such a header, if you don't do it explicitly. And the default is set as iso-8859-1.

Try with this line:

<?php
header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8");

answered Oct 10, 2011 at 7:22

troelskn

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1 Comment

Quentin Over a year ago

Didn't change anything. Also I have to mention that firefox says the page is in UTF8 so I guess the headers are already good ?

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