removing strange characters from php string - php

Question

this is what i have right now
Drawing an RSS feed into the php, the raw xml from the rss feed reads:
Paul’s Confidence
The php that i have so far is this.
$newtitle = $item->title;
$newtitle = utf8_decode($newtitle);
The above returns;
Paul?s Confidence
If i remove the utf_decode, i get this
Paul’s Confidence
When i try a str_replace;
$newtitle = str_replace("”", "", $newtitle);
It doesnt work, i get;
Paul’s Confidence
Any thoughts?

Answer 1

This is my function that always works, regardless of encoding:
function RemoveBS($Str) {
$StrArr = str_split($Str); $NewStr = '';
foreach ($StrArr as $Char) {
$CharNo = ord($Char);
if ($CharNo == 163) { $NewStr .= $Char; continue; } // keep £
if ($CharNo > 31 && $CharNo < 127) {
$NewStr .= $Char;
}
}
return $NewStr;
}
How it works:
echo RemoveBS('Hello õhowå åare youÆ?'); // Hello how are you?

Answer 2

Try this:
$newtitle = html_entity_decode($newtitle, ENT_QUOTES, "UTF-8")
If this is not the solution browse this page http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.html-entity-decode.php

Answer 3

This will remove all non-ascii characters / special characters from a string.
//Remove from a single line string
$output = "Likening ‘not-critical’ with";
$output = preg_replace('/[^(\x20-\x7F)]*/','', $output);
echo $output;
//Remove from a multi-line string
$output = "Likening ‘not-critical’ with \n Likening ‘not-critical’ with \r Likening ‘not-critical’ with. ' ! -.";
$output = preg_replace('/[^(\x20-\x7F)\x0A\x0D]*/','', $output);
echo $output;

Answer 4

I solved the problem. Seems to be a short fix rather than the larger issue, but it works.
$newtitle = str_replace('’', "'", $newtitle);
I also found this useful snippit that may help others with same problem;
<?
$find[] = '“'; // left side double smart quote
$find[] = 'â€'; // right side double smart quote
$find[] = '‘'; // left side single smart quote
$find[] = '’'; // right side single smart quote
$find[] = '…'; // elipsis
$find[] = '—'; // em dash
$find[] = '–'; // en dash
$replace[] = '"';
$replace[] = '"';
$replace[] = "'";
$replace[] = "'";
$replace[] = "...";
$replace[] = "-";
$replace[] = "-";
$text = str_replace($find, $replace, $text);
?>
Thanks everyone for your time and consideration.

Answer 5

Yeah this is not working for me. What is the workaround for this? – vaichidrewar Mar 12 at 22:29
Add this to the HTML head (or modify if already there):
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
This will encode the funny chars like "“" into UTF-8 so that the str_replace() function will interpret them properly.
Or you can do this:
ini_set('default_charset', 'utf-8');

Answer 6

Is the character encoding setting for your PHP server something other than UTF-8? If so, is there a reason or could it be changed to UTF-8? Though we don't store data in UTF-8 in our database, I've found that setting the webserver's character set to UTF-8 seems to help resolve character set issues.
I'd be interested in hearing others' opinions about this... whether I'm setting myself up for problems by setting webserver to UTF-8 while storing submitted data in Latin1 in our mysql database. I know there was a reason I chose Latin1 for the database but can't recall what it was. Interestingly, our current setup seems to allow for non-UTF-8 character entry and subsequent rendering... it seems that storing in Latin1 doesn't prevent subsequent decoding and display of all UTF-8 characters?

Answer 7

Use the below PHP code to remove
html_entity_decode(mb_convert_encoding(stripslashes($name), "HTML-ENTITIES", 'UTF-8'))

Answer 8

Read up on http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.html-entity-decode.php
That & symbol is a html code so you can easily decode it.

Answer 9

Super simple solution is to have the characters decoded when the page is loaded
Simply copy/paste the following at the beginning of the script
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');
mb_internal_encoding('UTF-8');
mb_http_output('UTF-8');
mb_http_input('UTF-8');
mb_regex_encoding('UTF-8');
Reference: http://php.net/manual/en/function.mb-internal-encoding.php
comment left by webfav at web dot de

Answer 10

Many Strange Character be removed by applying
mysqli_set_charset($con,"utf8");
below the mysql connection code.
but in some circumstances of removing this type strange character like â€
we need to use: $title = ' Stefen Suraj'; $newtitle = preg_replace('/[^(\x20-\x7F)]*/','', $title); echo $newtitle;
Output will be: Stefen Suraj

Answer 11

It does not work
You need to use
$arr1 = str_split($str)
then foreach and
echo($arr1[$k])
This will show you exactly which characters are written into the string.

Answer 12

Please Try this.
$find[] = '/“/' //'“'; // left side double smart quote
$find[] = '/”/' //'â€'; // right side double smart quote
$find[] = '/‘/' //'‘'; // left side single smart quote
$find[] = '/’/' //'’'; // right side single smart quote
$find[] = '/â€&#133/' //'…'; // elipsis
$find[] = '/‖/' //'—'; // em dash
$find[] = '/–/' //'–'; // en dash
$replace[] = '“' // '"';
$replace[] = '”' // '"';
$replace[] = '‘' // "'";
$replace[] = '’' // "'";
$replace[] = '⋯' // "...";
$replace[] = '—' // "-";
$replace[] = '–' // "-";
$text = str_replace($find, $replace, $text);

Answer 13

1.The order of the strings in the $find array is significant.
2.This string "‘" should contain a tilde and look like three characters. If I save the .php file with my Genie editor it gits changed to just two characters "â€".
3.This is a useful reference https://www.i18nqa.com/debug/utf8-debug.html
<?php
$text = "‘’“â€1‘ 2’ 3â€â€œâ€™â€˜ 4’ 5 6 7’ ‘, ’, “, â€â€˜";
echo($text . "<br>");
$find = array("‘", "’", "“", "â€");
$replace = array("‘", "’", "“", "”");
$text = str_replace($find, $replace, $text);
echo($text);
?>

Answer 14

Just one simple solution.
if your string contains these type of strange chars
suppose $text contains some of these then just do as shown bellow:
$mytext=mb_convert_encoding($text, "HTML-ENTITIES", 'UTF-8')
and it will work..