Error on accentuated characters with PHP and MySQL - php

Question

My problem is that what is written directly via PHP is correctly accentuated, but when the accentuated word comes from the MySQL, the letters come like this �.
I tried using the html charset as ISO-8859-1 and it fixed the MySQL letters, but broke the others. One way to fix it all is to set my .php files to ISO-8859-1, but I can't do it, I need to use it in utf-8 encode.
What can I do?
At the moment solution: Include mysqli_set_charset($link, "utf8"); before the queries (only need to do once for each connection made). I'm still looking for a conclusive solution on the server, not on the client.
EDIT:
mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'char%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client | utf8 |
| character_set_connection | utf8 |
| character_set_database | utf8 |
| character_set_filesystem | binary |
| character_set_results | utf8 |
| character_set_server | utf8 |
| character_set_system | utf8 |
| character_sets_dir | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'collation%';
+----------------------+-----------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-----------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_general_ci |
| collation_database | utf8_general_ci |
| collation_server | utf8_general_ci |
+----------------------+-----------------+
mysql> show variables like "character_set_database";
+------------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+------------------------+-------+
| character_set_database | utf8 |
+------------------------+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> show variables like "collation_database";
+--------------------+-----------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+--------------------+-----------------+
| collation_database | utf8_general_ci |
+--------------------+-----------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
These are the values of my database, but I still cannot make it right.
EDIT2:
<meta charset="utf-8">
...
$con = mysqli_connect('localhost', 'root', 'root00--', 'eicomnor_db');
$query = "SELECT * FROM table";
$result = mysqli_query($con, $query);
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>" . $row['id'] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $row['nome'] . "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}
mysqli_close($con);
Here's the PHP code.

Answer 1

First off, don't try to modify your php files in the direction of ISO-8859-1, that's going backwards, and may lead to compatibility issues with browsers on down the line. Instead, you want to be following the path to utf-8 from the bottom up.
The
easiest thing to check is to make sure that you're serving your html as utf-8:
AddDefaultCharset utf-8 in your apache config may help with that,
and <meta charset="utf-8"> in your html header will as well.
The second thing to check is to make sure that the mysql connection & collation
uses utf-8:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/charset-connection.html or http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Converting_your_MySQL_database_to_UTF8
The
final and most annoying step is to convert any data actually in the
database to utf-8. Back up your data with a standard mysql dump first! There are a few tricks to simplify this process by creating a dump of the database as utf-8 and then putting it back into the system with the right collation, but be aware that this is a delicate process and be sure you have a solid backup to work with first! http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Converting_your_MySQL_database_to_UTF8 is a good guide to that process.
Good luck! charset issues with old databases are often more work than they initially appear.

Answer 2

Have you tried iconv? As you know that the charset used on the DB is ISO-8859-1, you can convert to your charset (I'm assuming UTF-8):
// Assuming that $text is the text coming from the DB
$text = iconv("ISO-8859-1", "UTF-8", $text)

Answer 3

Assuming you send the output to the browser, you need to ensure that the proper charset <meta charset="utf-8" /> is set and that you don't override it in your browser settings (check that it's either "auto" or "uft-8").

Answer 4

Include mysqli_set_charset($link, "utf8"); before the queries (only need to do once for each connection made) resolves the problem.