I've just created my first ajax function with jQuery which actually works, but unfortunately the character encoding (for characters like ä, ö, ü, ß, c, c, å, ø) is a nightmare.

My files and my database are all UTF-8. I've tried a multitude of options in the ajax function and the PHP function, none of which were satisfactory.

This is my ajax

var dataString = {
 'name': name,
 'mail': mail
 // other stuff
}


    $.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: "/post.php",
data: dataString,
contentType: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8",
cache: false,
success: function(html){
 // do stuff
}

I've tried it without contentType: "application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8" and I've tried to wrap the affected data in encodeURIComponent(), none of which worked.

When I use that AJAX with htmlentities() in my php, my umlauts look like this in plain text: UE �, AE �, OE �, ue ü, ae ä, oe o

And like this in the database: UE Ü , AE Ä, OE Ö, ue ü, ae ä, oe o

If I don't use htmlentities() but mysql_real_escape_string() instead (or neither), they look good in plain text, but they look like this in the database: AE Ä, OE Ö, UE Ü, ae ä oe ö ue ü

I've been trying tons of options for hours now, but I can't find a solution that works. So far the only option I seem to have is having them look like a total mess in the database, but that would be very contraproductive if those data sets need to be edited.