Error reading arabic in csv files with excel - php

Question

I have this code that export Database table as csv and I have it like this
ط¨ط§ط±ط§ط³ it should look like this علي. I do not know what is the problem.is it because of encoding or what. and my table Collation is utf8_general_ci
$mysqli = new mysqli('localhost', 'root', '', 'test');
if ($mysqli->connect_errno)
{
$debug = $debug.'<br/>Failed to connect to MySQL: (' . $mysqli->connect_errno . ') ' . $mysqli->connect_error;
}
else
{
$debug = $debug.'<br/>Connected to '. $mysqli->host_info;
}
function export($query_exp,$name)
{
require 'classs.php';
$filename = $name.' - '.date('Y.m.d').'.xls'; /*set desired output file name here*/
function cleanData(&$str)
{
$str = preg_replace("/\t/", "\\t", $str);
$str = preg_replace("/\r?\n/", "\\n", $str);
if(strstr($str, '"')) $str = '"' . str_replace('"', '""', $str) . '"';
if ($str=='') {$str='-';}
}
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$filename\"");
header("Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-excel");
$flag = false;
if ($result = $mysqli->query($query_exp))
{
if ($result->num_rows>0)
{
$result->data_seek(0);
while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc())
{
if(!$flag)
{
print implode("\t", array_keys($row)) . "\r\n";
$flag = true;
}
array_walk($row, 'cleanData');
print implode("\t", array_values($row)) . "\r\n";
}
}
else { $debug = $debug.'<br/>Empty result'; /*DEBUG*/ }
}
else { $debug = $debug.'<br/>Oups, Query error!<br/>Query: '.$query_exp.'<br/>Error: '.$mysqli->error.'.'; /*DEBUG*/ }
require 'classs.php';
}
export('SELECT * FROM exel;','file');

Answer 1

After connecting, you need to tell mysql you are sending, and want to receive utf8:
$mysql->query("set names 'utf-8'");