Storing and displaying unicode string (??????) using PHP and MySQL
- by Anirudh Goel
I have to store hindi text in a MySQL database, fetch it using a PHP script and display it on a webpage. I did the following:
I created a database and set its encoding to UTF-8 and also the collation to utf8_bin.
I added a varchar field in the table and set it to accept UTF-8 text in the charset property.
Then I set about adding data to it. Here I had to copy data from an existing site.
The hindi text looks like this: ????????:05:30
I directly copied this text into my database and used the PHP code echo(utf8_encode($string)) to display the data. Upon doing so the browser showed me "??????".
When I inserted the UTF equivalent of the text by going to "view source" in the browser, however, ???????? translates into सूर्योदय.
If I enter and store सूर्योदय in the database, it converts perfectly.
So what I want to know is how I can directly store ???????? into my database and fetch it and display it in my webpage using PHP.
Also, can anyone help me understand if there's a script which when I type in ????????, gives me सूर्योदय?
Solution Found
I wrote the following sample script which worked for me. Hope it helps someone else too
<html>
<head>
<title>Hindi</title></head>
<body>
<?php
include("connection.php"); //simple connection setting
$result = mysql_query("SET NAMES utf8"); //the main trick
$cmd = "select * from hindi";
$result = mysql_query($cmd);
while ($myrow = mysql_fetch_row($result))
{
echo ($myrow[0]);
}
?>
</body>
</html>
The dump for my database storing hindi utf strings is
CREATE TABLE `hindi` (
`data` varchar(1000) character set utf8 collate utf8_bin default NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
INSERT INTO `hindi` VALUES ('????????');
Now my question is, how did it work without specifying "META" or header info?
Thanks!
