Question

I have a simple PHP script to extract data from a mySQL database and encode it as JSON. The problem is that special characters (for example German ä or ß characters) are stripped from the JSON response. Everything after the first special character for any single field is just stripped.

The fields are set to utf8_bin, and in phpMyAdmin the characters display correctly.

The PHP script looks like this:

<?php
header("Content-type: application/json; charset=utf-8");

$con = mysql_connect('database', 'username', 'password');
if (!$con)
  {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
  }

mysql_select_db("sql01_5789willgil", $con);

$sql="SELECT * FROM weightevent";

$result = mysql_query($sql);
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);

$events = array();

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
 $eventid = $row['eventid'];
 $userid = $row['userid'];
 $weight = $row['weight'];
 $sins = $row['sins'];
 $gooddeeds = $row['gooddeeds'];
 $date = $row['date'];
 $event = array("eventid"=>$eventid, "userid"=>$userid, "weight"=>$weight, "sins"=>$sins, 
 "gooddeeds"=>$gooddeeds, "date"=>$date);
 array_push($events, $event);
}

$myJSON = json_encode($events);

echo $myJSON;

mysql_close($con);
?>

Sample output:

[{"eventid":"2","userid":"1","weight":"70.1","sins":"Weihnachtspl","gooddeeds":"situps! lots and lots of situps!","date":"2011-01-02"},{"eventid":"3","userid":"2","weight":"69.9","sins":"A second helping of pasta...","gooddeeds":"I ate lots of salad","date":"2011-01-01"}]

–> in the first record the value for field ‘sins’ should be “Weihnachtsplätzchen”.

thanks very much!

Answer 1

mysql_set_charset("utf8"); right after mysql_connect