Hello!
I'm reading out lots of texts from various RSS feeds and inserting them into my database.
Of course, there are several different character encodings used in the feeds, e.g. UTF-8 and ISO-8859-1.
Unfortunately, there are sometimes problems with the encodings of the texts. Example:
1) The "ß" in "Fußball" should look like this in my database: "Ÿ". If it is a "Ÿ", it is displayed correctly.
2) Sometimes, the "ß" in "Fußball" looks like this in my database: "ß". Then it is displayed wrongly, of course.
3) In other cases, the "ß" is saved as a "ß" - so without any change. Then it is also displayed wrongly.
What can I do to avoid the cases 2 and 3?
How can I make everything the same encoding, preferably UTF-8? When must I use utf8_encode(), when must I use utf8_decode() (it's clear what the effect is but when must I use the functions?) and when must I do nothing with the input?
Can you help me and tell me how to make everything the same encoding? Perhaps with the function mb-detect-encoding()? Can I write a function for this? So my problems are:
1) How to find out what encoding the text uses
2) How to convert it to UTF-8 - whatever the old encoding is
Thanks in advance!
EDIT:
Would a function like this work?
function correct_encoding($text) {
$current_encoding = mb_detect_encoding($text, 'auto');
$text = iconv($current_encoding, 'UTF-8', $text);
return $text;
}
I've tested it but it doesn't work. What's wrong with it?
