Encoding PHP PDO MS SQL Server - php

Question

I am starting learn PDO with MS SQL Server.
Connecting with this code:
$userDB = 'userBD';
$passwordDB = 'passwordDB';
try {
$DBH = new PDO('mssql:dbname=spr_bank;host=hostname', $userDB, $passwordDB);
$DBH->setAttribute( PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION );
}
catch(PDOException $e) {
echo "<h1 style='font-weight:bold; color:red;'>Error. Can not connect to Database</h1>";
file_put_contents('PDOErrors.log', date("Y-m-d H:i:s")." - ".$e->getMessage()."\n", FILE_APPEND);
exit();
}
and now, I select data from table:
//simple query and binding with results
$query = $DBH->prepare("SELECT name FROM spr_sotrudnik WHERE login = :login AND password = :password");
$login = (isset($_POST['login']) === true) ? $_POST['login'] : '' ; // ? : shorthand for if else
$password = (isset($_POST['password']) === true) ? md5($_POST['password']) : '' ; // ? : shorthand for if else
// bind parameters - avoids SQL injection
$query->bindValue(':login', $login);
$query->bindValue(':password', $password);
//try... if not catch exception
try {
// run the query
$query->execute();
while($rows = $query->fetch()){
echo $rows["name"];
}
}
catch(PDOException $e){
echo $e->getMessage(), $e->getFile(), $e->getLine();
}
When I go to the browser, I get this error:
SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 10007 Unicode data in a Unicode-only collation or ntext data cannot be sent to clients using DB-Library (such as ISQL) or ODBC version 3.7 or earlier. [10007] (severity 5) [(null)]D:\www\sklad_new\inc\auth.php19
When I write this query
$query = $DBH->prepare(" SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(MAX),name) AS s FROM spr_sotrudnik WHERE login = :login AND password = :password");
I have no error, but I see "?????"
How can I change this?

Answer 1

You're omitting the charset parameter in the DSN string:
$DBH = new PDO('mssql:dbname=spr_bank;host=hostname', $userDB, $passwordDB);
... so you're probably using default encodings along the whole toolchain.
In any case, the PDO_DBLIB driver is clearly tagged as experimental and includes this notice:
On Windows, you should use SqlSrv, an alternative driver for MS SQL is
available from Microsoft: »
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/ff657782.aspx .
If it is not possible to use SqlSrv, you can use the PDO_ODBC driver
to connect to Microsoft SQL Server and Sybase databases, as the native
Windows DB-LIB is ancient, thread un-safe and no longer supported by
Microsoft.
In my experience, this means that you can obtain all sort of unpredicted side effects.