json_encode function: special characters

The manual for json_encode specifies this:

All string data must be UTF-8 encoded.

Thus, try array_mapping utf8_encode() to your array before you encode it:

$arr = array_map('utf8_encode', $arr);
$json = json_encode($arr);

// {"funds":"ComStage STOXX\u00c2\u00aeEurope 600 Techn NR ETF"}

For reference, take a look at the differences between the three examples on this fiddle. The first doesn't use character encoding, the second uses htmlentities and the third uses utf8_encode - they all return different results.

For consistency, you should use utf8_encode().

Docs

  • json_encode()
  • utf8_encode()
  • array_map()

To me, it works this way:

# Creating the ARRAY from Result.
$array=array();

while($row = $result->fetch_array(MYSQL_ASSOC))
{
    # Converting each column to UTF8
    $row = array_map('utf8_encode', $row);
    array_push($array,$row);
}

json_encode($array);

Your input has to be encoded as UTF-8 or ISO-8859-1.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.json-encode.php

Because if you try to convert an array of non-utf8 characters you'll be getting 0 as return value.

Since 5.5.0 The return value on failure was changed from null string to FALSE.

Tags:

Php

Json

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