[RESOLVED] Convert caracters string

[deezerd]

Hi

Here is my issue:
I get some text info parsing google images pages but some data are tagged with caracters I never saw before (unicode maybe?)

\x3cb\x3e my photo \x3c/b\x3e

Is there a way to extract the initial text "my photo" from this string?
thanks

[mikell]

Yes, that is unicode. “\x3c” and “\x3e” represent the characters "<" and ">".
So in your case, the title of that photo is marked up: <b> my photo </b>
You can filter out all the markup tags using regular expressions.

[deezerd]

I see, so is there a function to convert unicode into utf8 or entity caracters?
I can't find one
thanks

[mikell]

If you're saying you want to convert the weird looking characters into their more recognizable counterparts...try utf8_decode() ~ http://us.php.net/utf8-decode

For example:

<?php 
 $str_uft8 = "\x3cb\x3e my photo \x3c/b\x3e";
 $str_ascii = utf8_decode($str_uft8);
 echo($str_ascii);

 /*output: <b> my photo </b> */
?>

iconv() is another way to go: http://us2.php.net/iconv

<?php 
 $str_uft8 = "\x3cb\x3e my photo \x3c/b\x3e";
 $str_ascii = iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1", $str_uft8);
 echo($str_ascii);

 /*output: <b> my photo </b> */
?>

I've never had to convert character encodings before so take that advice with a grain of salt.

[deezerd]

Mikell, thanks again for your strong help 🙂