Special Characters in FPDF with PHP

Figured this out by doing the following (pagesubtitle is the name of the text field in the form):

$reportSubtitle = stripslashes($_POST['pagesubtitle']);
$reportSubtitle = iconv('UTF-8', 'windows-1252', $reportSubtitle);

Then print it out:

$pdf->Write (6, $reportSubtitle);

This will remove any unwanted slashes following apostrophes, as well as use the 'iconv' function to print special characters such as ™

All of the above did not work for me, but I did get it to work.

I managed to do it "the barbarian way" by just translating every weird character to its url value. Then simply decode the url and voila!

function em($word) {

    $word = str_replace("@","%40",$word);
    $word = str_replace("`","%60",$word);
    $word = str_replace("¢","%A2",$word);
    $word = str_replace("£","%A3",$word);
    $word = str_replace("¥","%A5",$word);
    $word = str_replace("|","%A6",$word);
    $word = str_replace("«","%AB",$word);
    $word = str_replace("¬","%AC",$word);
    $word = str_replace("¯","%AD",$word);
    $word = str_replace("º","%B0",$word);
    $word = str_replace("±","%B1",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ª","%B2",$word);
    $word = str_replace("µ","%B5",$word);
    $word = str_replace("»","%BB",$word);
    $word = str_replace("¼","%BC",$word);
    $word = str_replace("½","%BD",$word);
    $word = str_replace("¿","%BF",$word);
    $word = str_replace("À","%C0",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Á","%C1",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Â","%C2",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ã","%C3",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ä","%C4",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Å","%C5",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Æ","%C6",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ç","%C7",$word);
    $word = str_replace("È","%C8",$word);
    $word = str_replace("É","%C9",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ê","%CA",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ë","%CB",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ì","%CC",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Í","%CD",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Î","%CE",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ï","%CF",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ð","%D0",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ñ","%D1",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ò","%D2",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ó","%D3",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ô","%D4",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Õ","%D5",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ö","%D6",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ø","%D8",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ù","%D9",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ú","%DA",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Û","%DB",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ü","%DC",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Ý","%DD",$word);
    $word = str_replace("Þ","%DE",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ß","%DF",$word);
    $word = str_replace("à","%E0",$word);
    $word = str_replace("á","%E1",$word);
    $word = str_replace("â","%E2",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ã","%E3",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ä","%E4",$word);
    $word = str_replace("å","%E5",$word);
    $word = str_replace("æ","%E6",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ç","%E7",$word);
    $word = str_replace("è","%E8",$word);
    $word = str_replace("é","%E9",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ê","%EA",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ë","%EB",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ì","%EC",$word);
    $word = str_replace("í","%ED",$word);
    $word = str_replace("î","%EE",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ï","%EF",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ð","%F0",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ñ","%F1",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ò","%F2",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ó","%F3",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ô","%F4",$word);
    $word = str_replace("õ","%F5",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ö","%F6",$word);
    $word = str_replace("÷","%F7",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ø","%F8",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ù","%F9",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ú","%FA",$word);
    $word = str_replace("û","%FB",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ü","%FC",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ý","%FD",$word);
    $word = str_replace("þ","%FE",$word);
    $word = str_replace("ÿ","%FF",$word);
    return $word;
}

And of course me calling the function

$weirdword = "Días, Miércoles, Sábado,miércoles"; //Some spanish days
$weirdword = em($weirdword);
$weirdword = urldecode($weirdword);
echo $weirdword;

Giving output:

Días, Miércoles, Sábado,miércoles