write a php function which works for any lanuage - php

Question

I'm writing a function to clear text which works with or without ut8 characters.
I keep getting text like this.
Coventry Salary - �25,000 - �35,000
but with this function it removes the � but leaves other.
I want to know if anyone wrote a function which cleans the text.
function convertHTMLSpecialChars ( $str='' )
{
$str = htmlspecialchars ( $str );
$str = mb_convert_encoding($str, 'UTF-8', mb_detect_encoding($str));
$str = htmlspecialchars($str, ENT_NOQUOTES, 'UTF-8');
return $str;
}

Answer 1

this function:
$str = mb_convert_encoding($str, 'UTF-8', mb_detect_encoding($str));
just tries to detect the character set from $str; if it finds that $str contains
utf8 characters it will return "utf8" so the func will be actually:
$str = mb_convert_encoding($str, 'UTF-8', 'UTF-8');
which doesnt help much..
in my opinion you should give the character set of your string by hand.
for example, if its turkish: iso-8859-5, if its greek: iso-8859-7 and so..

Answer 2

Make sure the server outputs your page as UTF-8.
You can force it by using:
header ('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8');