MySQL query returning non UTF8 characters - php

I've got a login screen that checks entered username and password against a MySQL database.
My problem is that it doesn't recognize Swedish characters like "ÅÄÖ".
For example, the password "lösenord" is in the database but it isn't accepted, however "losenord" is.
The database has "utf8_general_ci" connection collation and I've set the charset to UTF-8 in my index.html but not in my php scripts.
I've read what feels like a million different ways to solve UTF 8 issues like this but I can't get it to work.
If someone could at least point me in the right direction I would be very thankful.
Do I need to encode each mysql query, set some META tag?
Cheers

Try using SET NAMES 'UTF8' after connecting to MySQL:
$con=mysqli_connect("host", "user", "pw", "db");
if (!$con)
{
die('Failed to connect to mySQL: ' .mysqli_connect_errno());
}
/* change character set to utf8 */
if (!$con->set_charset("utf8")) {
printf("Error loading character set utf8: %s\n", $con->error);
}
As the manual says:
SET NAMES indicates what character set the client will use to send SQL
statements to the server... It also specifies the character set that the server should
use for sending results back to the client.
Also use utf8_swedish_ci in your table, otherwise string comparison will go wrong and MySQL will treat 'ö' and 'o' as the same character.

Related

can't get UTF-8 names into a mysql database

I'm having a problem getting UTF-8 names written into a MySQL database... Here's what I have.
PHP page head has....
<meta charset="utf-8">
the MySQL column is: Char (80) with utf8_unicode_ci (these were originally latin1... I've changed them to UTF-8, truncated the database, then rerun the code)
The variable echoes to screen: Germán Mera
but writes it to database as Germán Mera
I tried putting utf8_encode(); around the variable, but then it writes to database as: Germán Mera and screen as Germán Mera (I know that command only works on iso-8859-1.. I think the JSON page is already UTF-8)
Here is an excerpt of the code I am using to get the name (for sake of simplicity, I'm only showing relevant code - I know what's shown below is not secure)
$str = file_get_contents('http://fantasy.mlssoccer.com/web/api/elements/647/');
$jsonarray = json_decode($str, true);
$name = $jsonarray['web_name'];
mysqli_query ($con, "INSERT INTO mlsprices (name) VALUES ('$name')");
Any idea how I can get this to write to the database properly? When I search, I only get quite complicated answers (eg, this) and there's surely an easier way.
Try using SET NAMES 'UTF8' after connecting to MySQL:
$con=mysqli_connect("host", "user", "pw", "db");
if (!$con)
{
die('Failed to connect to mySQL: ' .mysqli_connect_errno());
}
/* change character set to utf8 */
if (!$con->set_charset("utf8")) {
printf("Error loading character set utf8: %s\n", $con->error);
}
As the manual says:
SET NAMES indicates what character set the client will use to send SQL
statements to the server... It also specifies the character set that the server should
use for sending results back to the client.

Converting html entities to utf-8 and inserting them into a mysql database

I am trying to convert a string from HTML-ENTITIES to UTF-8 and then save the encoded string in my database. The html entities are greek letters and look for example like this: νω
Now I tried thousands of different ways, starting from just using utf8_encode or html_entity_decode until now I came across the function mb_convert_encoding().
Now the really weird thing is that when converting my string and then outputting it, it is correctly encoded to utf-8, but when inserting this string into my database I end up getting something like: ξÏνω.
This is the code for the encoding:
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');
mb_internal_encoding('utf-8');
......
while($arr = $select->fetch_array(MYSQLI_ASSOC))
{
$text = $arr["greek"];
$result = mb_convert_encoding($text, 'UTF-8', 'HTML-ENTITIES');
$mysqli->query("UPDATE some SET greek = '".$result."'");
}
When outputting my query and then manually doing a sql query in phpmyadmin it works fine, so it doesnt seem to be a problem of my db. There must be some problem when transferring the encoded string to my database...
As you see in your script, you are instructing the browser to use UTF8. That is the first step.
However your database needs the same thing and also the encoding/collation on the tables need to be UTF8 too.
You can either recreate your tables using utf8_general_ci or utf8_unicode_ci as the collation, or convert the existing tables (see here)
You need to also make sure that your database connection i.e. php code to mysql is using UTF8. If you are using PDO there are plenty of articles that show how to do that. The simplest way is to do:
$mysqli->query('SET NAMES utf8');
NOTE The change you will make now is final. If you change the connection encoding to your database, you could affect existing data.
EDIT You can do the following to set the connection
$mysqli = new mysqli($host, $user, $pass, $db);
if (!$mysqli->set_charset("utf8")) {
die("Error loading character set utf8: %s\n", $mysqli->error);
}
$mysqli->close();
Links of interest:
Whether to use "SET NAMES"
Execute the SET NAMES 'utf8' query prior to any others.

Amazon RDS, UTF-8 unicode issue with php

I'm using Amazon's RDS, and I'm having difficulty reading utf data from the DB. The results are shown as non-utf characters and hence with utf-8 encoding in the db they show up as bad characters.
The DB was transferred from another MySQL database (not Amazon RDS) and when the code communicates with that database everything is fine.
I checked the Character Set, and Collates on all tables, and the DB itself they are all UTF-8 and utf_general_ci
The pages are using utf-8 encoding like this
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
I also tried passing this query "SET NAMES utf8", still didn't help.
I noticed someone else has had the same problem with RDS
Can't store UTF-8 in RDS despite setting up new Parameter Group using Rails on Heroku
And the solution given to them was to specify the character set in the connection string, that solution apparently worked for rails, but in PHP I don't think there is such a thing as connection string.
This is how I connect to mysql
mysqli_connect($this->host, $this->login, $this->pw, $this->database)
Also if I change the data type of those columns to binary data types such as BLOB they will work properly.
What you're looking for instead of a connection string is most likely mysqli::set_charset() which will change your default client character set;
if (!$mysqli->set_charset("utf8")) {
printf("Error loading character set utf8: %s\n", $mysqli->error);
} else {
printf("Current character set: %s\n", $mysqli->character_set_name());
}

weird characters in database

hi i need to store the weird character in my database but when i am trying to do so the weird character is replace with unknown character. i am giving you one example when i am try to enter in Sönke Wortmann in database it is stored as Sönke Wortmann. i want to store above text as same as it was.please tell me how can i do so
You should use Unicode tables as well as a Unicode connection to your database.
Assuming you use MySQL:
Set the default character set of your table to utf8 and make sure the connection to your database is also using this character set:
$conn = mysql_connect($server, $username, $password);
mysql_set_charset("UTF8", $conn);
See also: http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-set-charset.php
Check the character set of your current connection with:
echo mysql_client_encoding($conn);
See also: http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-client-encoding.php
When creating your tables do something like this:
create table tableName (
// Your table definition
) default charset = UTF8
If you have done these things and add weird characters to your table, you will see it is displayed correct.

UTF-8 Database Problem

I've a MySQL table that has a UTF-8 charset and upon attempting to insert to it via a PHP form, the database gives the following error:
PDOStatement::execute():
SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1366
Incorrect string value: '\xE8' for
column ...
The character in question is 'è', yet I don't see why this should be a problem considering the database and table are set to UTF-8.
Edit
I've tried directly from the mysql terminal and have the same problem.
Your database might be set to UTF-8, but the database connection also needs to be set to UTF-8. You should do that with a SET NAMES utf8 statement. You can use the driver_options in PDO to have it execute that as soon as you connect:
$handle = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=dbname",
'username', 'password',
array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_INIT_COMMAND => "SET NAMES utf8"));
Have a look at the following two links for more detailed information about making sure your entire site uses UTF-8 appropriately:
UTF-8 all the way through…
UTF8, PHP and MySQL
E8 is greater than the maximum usable character 7F in a one-byte UTF8 character: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8
It seems your connection is not set to UTF8 but some other 8 bit encoding like ISO Latin. If you set the database to UTF8 you only change the character set the database uses internally, connections may be on a different default value (latin1 for older MySQL versions) so you should try to send an initial SET CHARACTER SET utf-8 after connecting to the database. If you have access to my.cnf you can also set the correct default value there, but keep in mind that changing the default may break any other sites/apps running on the same host.
Before passing the value to Mysql you can use the following code:
$val = mb_check_encoding($val, 'UTF-8') ? $val : utf8_encode($val);
convert the string the to UTF-8, If it's matter of only one field.

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