Searching database with different charset - php

Question

I have a website with a small searching script, where I use utf-8 charset.
Now on my mysql database I use the latin1_swedish_ci charset.
When I want to search for something that has the letters å,ä or ö it doesn't return any results because in the database the letter å=Ã¥, ä=ä and ö=ö.
The solution to this problem would be telling the search script to replace these letters with those that the database understands.
So when my users search for something that has the letter å in it, it should convert it to Ã¥ and return proper results.
Any idea how to achieve this?
Thanks in advance
EDIT:
Added the script that im trying to modify, but with no luck.
Any idea on how to modify it so that it "converts" the charset:
<?php
// file for database connection
include('inc/db.inc.php');
// configuration file
include('inc/config.inc.php');
if(isset($_GET['p'])) {
$page_number = $_GET['p'];
$arraySearch = $_GET['terms'];
$show_count = $_GET['count'];
settype($page_number, 'integer');
}
$nospaces = substr($_GET['terms'],0,4);
$offset = ($page_number - 1) * $records_number;
// check for an empty string and display a message.
if ($_GET['terms'] == "") {
echo '<div id="counter">ex. write ´here and´ or ´search´ without quotes.</div>';
// minim 3 characters condition
} else if(strlen($_GET['terms']) < $limitchar) {
echo '<div id="counter">'. $limitchar .' characters minimum</div>';
// no spaces in first 4 letters
} else if(preg_replace('/[a-zA-Z0-9]/', '', $nospaces)) {
echo '<div id="counter">Please use letters or numbers in first 4 characters</div>';
} else {
// explode search words into an array
$arraySearch = explode(" ", $_GET['terms']);
// table fields to search
$arrayFields = array(0 => $first_field, 1 => $second_field);
$countSearch = count($arraySearch);
$a = 0;
$b = 0;
$query = "SELECT * FROM $table_name WHERE (";
$countFields = count($arrayFields);
while ($a < $countFields)
{
while ($b < $countSearch)
{
$query = $query."$arrayFields[$a] LIKE '%$arraySearch[$b]%'";
$b++;
if ($b < $countSearch)
{
$query = $query." AND ";
}
}
$b = 0;
$a++;
if ($a < $countFields)
{
$query = $query.") OR (";
}
}
$query = $query.") LIMIT $offset, $records_number;";
$search = mysql_query($query);
// get number of search results
$arrayFields = array(0 => $first_field, 1 => $second_field);
$countSearch = count($arraySearch);
$a = 0;
$b = 0;
$query = "SELECT * FROM $table_name WHERE (";
$countFields = count($arrayFields);
while ($a < $countFields)
{
while ($b < $countSearch)
{
$query = $query."$arrayFields[$a] LIKE '%$arraySearch[$b]%'";
$b++;
if ($b < $countSearch)
{
$query = $query." AND ";
}
}
$b = 0;
$a++;
if ($a < $countFields)
{
$query = $query.") OR (";
}
}
$query = $query.")";
$count_results = mysql_query($query);
$numrows = mysql_num_rows($count_results);
// no results
if($numrows == 0) {
echo '<div id="counter">No results found</div>';
// show results
} else {
echo '<div id="results">
<div id="results_top"><p><b>'. $_GET['terms'] .'</b> - '. $numrows .' results found</p></div>
';
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($search)) {
$urltitle = str_replace(" ","_", $row['title']);
echo '<div class="item">
<div class="details"><img src="http://www.onlinegamez.net/files/image/'.$row['icon'].'" width="90" height="65" alt="'.$row['title'].'"/>'.$row['title'].'<br />
'.$row['description'].'</div>
<div class="played"><span>'.$row['timesplayed'].'</span>
<p>played</p></div>
<div style="clear:both;"></div></div>';
}
// pagination
$maxPage = ceil($numrows/$records_number);
$nav = '';
for($page = 1; $page <= $maxPage; $page++) {
if ($page == $page_number) {
$nav .= "$page";
}
else
{
$nav .= "$page";
}
}
if ($page_number > 1) {
$page = $page_number - 1;
$prev = "«";
$first = "First";
}
else {
$prev = '';
$first = '';
}
if ($page_number < $maxPage) {
$page = $page_number + 1;
$next = "»";
$last = "Last";
}
else {
$next = '';
$last = '';
}
echo $data;
echo "<div id=\"results_bottom\"><p>$first $prev $nav $next $last</p></div>
</div>";
}
}
?>

Answer 1

First of all -- why are you using different charsets?
There are several ways to attack you problem, you could change the charset on connection;
set names 'utf8';
set character set 'utf8' collate 'utf8_swedish_ci';
You could do a collation based match;
select
`field`
from
`table`
where
cast(`field` as char character set 'utf8') collate 'utf8_swedish_ci' = '$PHP_VARIABLE'
Or you could change the charset on the variable in PHP;
$var_in_iso88591 = utf8_decode($var_in_utf8);
Look into utf8_encode()/utf8_decode() and iconv()