Issues with accents and strange characters in PHP/MySQL (Solved) Usually, when creating a website in PHP and MySQL, there’s a problem when introducing accents and strange characters, typically from foreign languages like Spanish or French: these get changed into áóñ and similar strange stuff. This happened to me a while ago and I freaked out and started tweaking everything, changing charsets and converting everything […]

36 comments

• Hello Xavi,

  Thanks for such a great post.

  How ever I tried to fix the issue with your article, But I did’t get success.
  Here are the two URL which shows very strange characters.
  Data is coming from Database.

  http://mob.immobelgica.be/nl/result/0%28new%29/All_Properties-verkopen-Belgi%C3%83%C2%AB.html

  http://mob.immobelgica.be/nl/search/handel-kantoor/te-huur/belgiã«/west-vlaanderen/brugge/62046/

  Please please please help me. I have already thrown the arms, but after I read your article, my hope are once again alive.

  Please let me know how you can help me.

  Thanks
  Andy

• Hi Andy,

  Have you followed all the steps in the article?
  Make sure the characters in the database are saved correctly.
  Are you using a CMS or you coded the website from scratch?

• Hi Xavi,
  I have followed your instructions almost to the letter. Table is set to utf8_unicode_ci (not utf_unicode_ci), the problem field which is a varchar(255) is set to utf8_spanish_ci. I have added mysql_query(“SET NAMES ‘utf8′”); as the first line of the script which makes the connection to the database. But I don’t know how I could follow your step 5: “Remove the DefaultCharset in Apache or modify it”.
  My problem is that acute and grave accents and some other characters are shown as a � symbol.

• This was an excellent article – Xavi – it solved my problem perfectly!
  Thank you.
  Miles

• Thnx a lot for this article! With mysql_query(“SET NAMES ‘utf8′”); i managed to fix my issue.

• Thanks very much to who wrote this article. He solved me a problem very clearly.
  Great !!!

• THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

  What a !”#$%&/(/&%$# headache I got during the day trying to figure what was wrong with PHP, MySQL, what ever…

  Database with accents, collations OK, head ok, but…
  This command mysql_query(“SET NAMES ‘utf8′”) did the trick!

• Me too – big thanks for showing up in Google when I was desperate, and for the SET Names tip which solved a problem I’d been tearing my hair out over!

• Thank you very much i fixed my problem! Thank you thank you thank you!

• Hi,
  what about importing data from a txt file??

  I’ve created a simple random generation and I get the odd ‘bits’ The php fix works where you’ve also got a data base connection but what happens if you have none?

• Thanks!! Tried mysql_query(“SET NAMES ‘utf8′”); first, hoping that the database was already setup right and it worked! Thank you so much for this!

• I already have a database created and managed with MySQL Workbench, where do it enter the details? How can I use the fix it in Workbench?

  Thanks

• I managed to work it out. Many Thanks Anyway!!!

• yes, SET NAMES ‘utf8’ worked like a charm. thanks a lot!

• Holy he-double hockey sticks! SET NAMES ‘utf8’ works. So simple.

• Fantastic advice been having issues with special characters for while while reading from MYSQL database added the mysql_query(“SET NAMES ‘utf8′”); to the connection file and worked a treat!
  Another little job I can tick off thank you!

• Thanks a lot, works like a charm!

• Hello, I’m having exactly this problem on a project and followed your instructions, however it didn’t work. I did not only issued SET NAMES but also a couple more, as I found here: http://verens.com/2006/05/05/some-utf8-problems-and-solutions/ but unfortunately it’s not working. I put everything on a connection file that I include on all scripts needed. The collation of all my mysql tables is utf-8_spanish2_ci

• Thanks for the detailed steps. It works perfectly.

• I can’t thank you enough!!!!
  you’re the best!

• you are a fuck@$%^$’ genius!!!!! Thanks!!!

• I am trying to compare a accented string with a value in the db.example:

  SELECT cities.name, adm1.value, adm1.country FROM cities JOIN adm1 ON adm1.value=cities.adm1 WHERE adm1.country = ‘ES’ AND cities.name like ‘%Pollença%’

  when I execute this in the mysql sql console in phpmyadmin , it returns 2 rows.But running this with php function mysql_query($sql); returns false.

  SO I guess SET NAMES ‘utf8′ will not help here as the query is running perfect when executed directly.

  Any ideas on this??

• Something I only found after hours of searching:
  http://php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php

  htmlentities() takes an optional third argument encoding which defines encoding used in conversion. If omitted, the default value for this argument is ISO-8859-1 in versions of PHP prior to 5.4.0, and UTF-8 from PHP 5.4.0 onwards.

  Drove me crazy for two hours until I found this

• Thank You.
  Step #4 was the step I was missing.
  You are a life saver!

• Wow! I was going crazy when every accented character in our database disappeared after a server-wide php update (it’s an Italian website, so LOTS of accented characters!) and step #4 magically(?) solved everything! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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• Thanks Xavi, one line, one solution!!! :)
  Gracias from mx

• Simple but useful!

• Xavi, thanks for this solution…it worked 100% and solved a problem with accented characters that had been bugging me for years.

• Hello Xavi
  what are differences if I am using utf_general_ci in my D.B?

• Thank you very much! You solved my problem! \o/

• Works nice! Thanks for the tip; I think i missed the “set names” command at mySQL connection.
  Cheers

• Hello Xavi,

  Step 4 just saved my life. I have been debugging my stuff for almost 3 hours now and couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong with it.

  Thank you very, very much.

• HI,
  I am adding data to the database through API and the data which i need to insert into table is in multi language. But I am not able to insert that data inside mysql table. I have set utf8_general_ci and do all the steps except last one in apache. Which i do not know from where to do. as I am using shared godaddy hosting. I am looking for long for the solution.

• Straightforward solution. Thanks a lot!

• i solved it like this:
  1.) on MySQL Server
  set according tables, columns to utf8mb4_bin

  2.) open connection with php like this:

  $dbc = mysqli_connect(DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_NAME);

  if(!$dbc){
  die('error connecting to database');
  }
  else{

  //printf("Initial character set: %s\n", $dbc->character_set_name());

  /* change character set to utf8mb4 */
if (!$dbc->set_charset("utf8mb4")) {
//printf("Error loading character set utf8mb4: %s\n", $dbc->error);
exit();
} else {
//printf("Current character set: %s\n", $dbc->character_set_name());
}
}

  Thanks though!