MySql UTF8 collation data with accents not displayed properly when PHP fetched - php

Question

I am fetching some data having UTF8 collation (utf8_unicode_ci) from a MySQL database with PHP. I am using this piece of code:
function advancedDatabaseSearch($pattern, $lpref) {
$link = mysql_connect(DB_URL, DB_USER, DB_PWD);
if (!$link) {
return 'Could not connect: ' . mysql_error();
}
$esc_value = mysql_real_escape_string($pattern);
$esc_lpref = mysql_real_escape_string($lpref);
mysql_select_db(DB_NAME, $link);
$query = "SELECT RAWVALUE FROM rawvalueitem "
."WHERE RAWVALUE LIKE '".$esc_value."' "
."AND LANGUAGE = '".$esc_lpref."' "
."ORDER BY RAWVALUE ASC";
$result = mysql_query($query);
$return = "";
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
$return = $return.$row['RAWVALUE']." ";
}
mysql_close($link);
return $return;
}
and then from the php called by Ajax:
$result = advancedDatabaseSearch($tttmp, $lpref);
echo $result;
return;
Yet, when I display the result in a text area, the accents are not displayed properly:
On the other side, when I fetch UT8 data from a file:
if ( $file_loc != NULL ) {
if ( file_exists($file_loc) ) {
$handle = fopen($file_loc, "rb");
$contents = fread($handle, filesize($file_loc));
fclose($handle);
$result = $contents;
}
}
echo $result;
return;
I don't get this issue !!! How can I solve it when using PHP to fetch data from MySql?

Answer 1

Did you set UTF-8 as the default character set of your database connection?
mysql_set_charset('utf8', $link);
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-set-charset.php
Also, does your page have a <meta> tag with the correct character set?

Answer 2

This is working like a.. you now!
<?php
$config_db_server='localhost';
$config_db_server_username='root';
$config_db_server_password='';
$config_db_database='test';
$config_db_charset='utf8';
$config_db_collation='utf8_general_ci';
$config_table_prefix='class_';
$config_live_site='http://localhost';
$config_abs_path='C:\xampp\htdocs';
$config_debug=0;
$dbLink = mysql_connect($config_db_server, $config_db_server_username, $config_db_server_password);
mysql_query("SET character_set_results=utf8", $dbLink);
mb_internal_encoding('utf8');
mysql_query("set names 'utf8'",$dbLink);
?>
Change here your db connect: ( $dbLink = mysql_connect($config_db_server, $config_db_server_username, $config_db_server_password); )