German Encoding Question

kbc1

Hi all

I have to update a customers admin system to support their German counterparts logging in and updating German only versions of the webpages.

The problem I am having is saving the data correctly, using German characters.

For example, I have manully added a section called Über uns to the database (About Us) and when I pull the data from the database to display in the admin system, i use htmlentities() to display the correct data.

However when I save it, i get alsorts of strange characters being saved in place of the German characters (question marks in black diamonds)

I have set up the META information to change to "de" based on the users IP address.

Any thoughts on what I should be doing when I POST my $_POST['content'] ready to save it?

Many Thanks
kbc

bradgrafelman

kbc1 wrote:
Any thoughts on what I should be doing when I POST my $_POST['content'] ready to save it?

My suggestion? UTF-8.

UTF-8 on the HTML pages (either in the HTTP headers or in a <meta> tag) and UTF-8 in all of your database tables.

kbc1

Thanks for the response but even when I change it to UTF-8 and save the data, I get the following for example:

String = Über uns

When I post the data ready to save I have this:

$pagename 			= trim(htmlentities($_POST['pagename']));

And then the value saved to the database is this:

Ã�ber uns

Why is it not converting it properly?

Many Thanks

cbj4074

Do you already have this type of thing in your code, prior to the point at which you attempt to commit the data to the table?

$q = 'SET NAMES \'utf8\'';
$r = mysql_query($q);

You must instruct MySQL as to which character set it should use before your UTF-8 characters will be preserved in both directions.

I usually prefer to run the "SET NAMES" query immediately after the connection is opened (perhaps somewhere within the method that opens the connection).