Question

I am configuring my Apache/2.2.17 server with PHP 5.3.5. My goal is to create a clean configuration which defaults to the content-type UTF-8.

php.ini:

default_charset = "UTF-8"
default_mimetype = "application/xhtml+xml"

I receive:

Content-Type: application/xhtml+xml

but require:

Content-Type: application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8

All Apache’s configuration (AddDefaultCharset UTF-8) solutions seem not to work, and I have restarted Apache after I edited my php.ini configuration.

PHP documentation:

default_charset string
PHP always outputs a character encoding by default in the Content-type: header. To disable sending of the charset, simply set it to be empty.

I’ve changed the default_mimetype field to text/html and suddenly, it seems to work: Content-Type:text/html; charset=UTF-8.
Settings the default_mimetype back to application/xhtml+xml will not send the charset=UTF-8. This is without any Apache configuration.

Is PHP broken, or have I missed something?

Answer 1

I have enabled the iconv module and added to php.ini:

output_handler = ob_iconv_handler

This handler adds the correct character-encoding for output to the Content-Type, instead of the default_charset.

However, you should set default_mimetype, or else it puts Content-Type:;charset=character-encoding.