SQLite UTF-8 output with fwrite - php

Question

I was trying to output UTF-8 text read from SQLite database to a text file using fwrite function, but with no luck at all.
When I echo the content to the browser I can read it with no problem. As a last resort, I created the same tables into MySQL database, and surprisingly it worked!
What could be the cause, how can I debug this so that I can use SQLite DB?
I am using PDO.
Below is the code I am using to read from DB and write to file:
$arFile = realpath(APP_PATH.'output/Arabic.txt');
$arfh = fopen($arFile, 'w');
$arTxt = '';
$key = 'somekey';
$sql = 'SELECT ot.langv AS orgv, et.langv AS engv, at.langv AS arbv FROM original ot LEFT JOIN en_vals et ON ot.langk=et.langk
LEFT JOIN ar_vals at ON ot.langk=at.langk
WHERE ot.langk=:key';
$stm = $dbh->prepare($sql);
$stm->execute(array(':key'=>$key));
if( $row = $stm->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC) ){
$arTxt .= '$_LANG["'.$key.'"] = "'.special_escape($row['arbv']).'";'."\n";
}
fwrite( $arfh, $arTxt);
fclose($arfh);

Answer 1

What could be the cause, how can I debug this so that I can use SQLite DB?
SQLite stores text into the database as it receives it. So if you store UTF-8 encoded text into the SQLite database, you can read UTF-8 text from it.
If you store, let's say, LATIN-1 text into the database, then you can read LATIN-1 text from it.
SQLite itself does not care. So you get out what you put in.
As you write in your question that display in browser looks good I would assume that at least some valid encoded values have been stored inside the database. You might want to look into your browser when you view that data, what your browser tells you in which encoding that data is.
If it says UTF-8 then fine. You might just only view the text-file with an editor that does not support UTF-8 to view files. Because fwrite also does not care about the encoding, it just puts the string data into the file and that's it.
So as long as you don't provide additional information with your question it's hard to tell something more specific.
See as well: How to change character encoding of a PDO/SQLite connection in PHP?