Encoding problems when importing sql statement from file - php

Question

I have encountered a problem, when i try to execute a sql statement I have stored in a file. The problem is that special characters like æøå becomes gibberish when they are imported to the database.
I use the code below:
$dsn = 'mysql:host='.DBHOST.';dbname='.DBBASE;
$db = new PDO($dsn, DBUSER, DBPASS);
//$db->exec("set names 'utf8'");
$sql = "TRUNCATE TABLE wtm_meta_language";
$db->exec($sql);
$sql = file_get_contents('language.sql');
$db->exec($sql);
The language.sql file is encoded in UTF-8 and so is the database.
I have tried to force the database connection to use utf-8 by adding "set names 'utf8'" to my code (row 3, that is now a comment), but when I add this row nothing gets imported at all.
I hope someone has an idea to how to solve this.

Answer 1

Your results are not getting retrieved because you did not add charset=utf8 .
$db = new PDO('mysql:host='.DBHOST.';dbname='.DBBASE.';charset=utf8', 'username', 'password');
and then it should allow you to get the required result.

Answer 2

Could be that PHP does not detect that the file is UTF-8 since, according to your comment, the BOM is missing.
I found this little function here which should force it to read UTF-8.
function file_get_contents_utf8($fn) {
$opts = array(
'http' => array(
'method'=>"GET",
'header'=>"Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8"
)
);
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$result = #file_get_contents($fn,false,$context);
return $result;
}
Also, if I were you I'd use mysql_set_charset to set the character set on the mysql connection. Also I'd use SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set%'; so see what the current connection character set is.