Help! The UTF-8 encoding doesn't work

Nub

I am trying to create a web page that my readers could write me a feedback, press the Submit button and it will be sent to my email.

I used the UTF 8 meta in my code.

For some reason, the writen Hebrew wordes reaches my mail as signs like this:

׳”׳₪׳¢׳ ׳–׳” ׳™׳”׳™׳” ׳‘׳¢׳‘׳¨׳™׳×!

Can anyone please help me understand why the UTF-8 encoding doesn't work?

There is two files involved in the process, a main file containing the form and another file: send_mail.php

<html>
<head>
<title>The Title</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="he" />
</head>
<body>
<BODY TEXT="PINK" BGCOLOR="BLACK" LINK="RED">
<CENTER><h1>My Page</h1></CENTER><BR>
<HR>
<form action="send_mail.php" method="post">
<table>
<tr>
<td>Email Adress:</td>
<td>
<input type="text" name="email_address" value="" maxlength="100" />
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Comments:</td>
<td>
<textarea rows="10" cols="50" name="comments"></textarea>
</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td>
<td>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

send_mail.php:

<?php

function isInjected($str) {
$injections = array('(\n+)',
'(\r+)',
'(\t+)',
'(%0A+)',
'(%0D+)',
'(%08+)',
'(%09+)'
);
$inject = join('|', $injections);
$inject = "/$inject/i";
if(preg_match($inject,$str)) {
return true;
}
else {
return false;
}
}

$email_address = $REQUEST['email_address'] ;
$comments = $REQUEST['comments'] ;

if (!isset($_REQUEST['email_address'])) {
header( "Location: 1.html" );
}

elseif (empty($email_address) || empty($comments)) {
header( "Location: error_message.html" );
}

elseif ( isInjected($email_address) ) {
header( "Location: error_message.html" );
}

else {
mail( "my@mail.com", "Feedback",
$comments, "From: $email_address" );
header( "Location: thank_you.html" );
}
?>

Thank You!

Bonesnap

Make sure your browser's encoding is set to UTF-8.

sneakyimp

You may be able to send some headers with the email.

See example #4 in the PHP documentation for [man]mail[/man]. You can see that they are using the additional headers parameter for the function and specifying a character encoding for latin 1:

$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";

You could take that line of code and alter it like this:

$headers .= 'Content-type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8' . "\r\n";

Not sure if that will work, but it would likely tell a mail client HEY THIS MAIL IS UTF-8

andrew_mit

sneakyimp tells ok but i suggest to add in PHP code in header something like that:
header( 'Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8' );

sneakyimp

Not exactly. Using the [man]header[/man] command is used to send a raw HTTP header and this will go to the browser of the person who is visiting your PHP script. In order to send such a header with your mail message, you have to supply it to the [man]mail[/man] function in one of the extra parameters. Read The Friendly Manual (RTFM) !