json_encode error for russian characters - php

Question

I am having trouble with the output of json_encode. I need to output Russian characters.
In my database table only Russian characters. In the output I am getting only "????????" question marks replaced Russian characters. I read many similar questions but none of them offered a real solution. I tried the following but none of them helped.
Below is my php code.
added ``header ('Content-type: application/json; charset=utf-8');`
used json_encode($albums, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);
tried mb_convert_encoding($str, 'UTF-8', 'auto');
json_encode($albums, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);
<?php
$host ="localhost";
$user ="misollar_user";
$pass="12345";
$db="misollar_db";
header ('Content-type: application/json; charset=utf-8');
$con = mysqli_connect($host,$user,$pass,$db);
$query = "select * from albums;";
$result = mysqli_query($con, $query);
$albums = array();
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)){
array_push($albums,array('id'=>$row[0], 'name'=>$row[1], 'songs_count'=>$row[2]));
}
mysqli_close($con);
echo json_encode($albums, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);
?>

Answer 1

You need to set UTF8 before retrieving results from mysql.
Just before you retrieve results from albums table, fire below query:
mysqli_query($con, 'SET names UTF8');
After this you can fetch your album results:
$query = "select * from albums;";
$result = mysqli_query($con, $query);