Question

I have been making a program that creates multiple CSV’s from another source CSV (encoded in ‘SJIS’/SHIFT-JIS). Here’s the process in which I am creating them:

1. Create a string, which will hold the contents of the output CSV’s
2. Fill in said strings with their proper information
3. Encode the string to UTF-8 from SJIS using mb_convert_encoding()
   code:
   $contents2 = mb_convert_encoding($contents, “UTF-8”, “SJIS”);

4. Create a zip archive using PHP’s provided library methods and append the files I desire with their corresponding strings using addFromString()
   code:
   $zipFileName = “output.zip”;

       $zip = new ZipArchive;
       if ($zip->open($zipFileName, ZipArchive::CREATE) === TRUE){
           $zip->addFromString('customer.csv', $contents2);
           ...do for the other files
           $zip->close();
       }
       else{
           echo 'Failed! File not created!';
       }
   

5. Prompt the user with a dialogue box to save the file in their desired location.
   code:
   $zipContents = file_get_contents($zipFileName);
   header(‘Content-Type: application/zip’);
   header(“Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=inflow.zip”);
   header(“Pragma: no-cache”);
   header(“Expires: 0”);
   echo $zipContents;

Now here is my problem: The files that I have created from the zip file are encoded in “UTF-8 without BOM” when I open it in Notepad++. However, I require for these files to just be in plain “UTF-8”. A inventory program I am using to upload these files, for reasons beyond me, will not show the proper characters for the CSV’s encoded in “UTF-8 without BOM”. Once I manually: open the files, re-encode it as “UTF-8”, and save them, are the files able to display the correct characters in this inventory program.

I have read a good deal of articles talking about the converse of this problem, where people were seeking to make their UTF-8 files become encoded without BOM. However, my situation is the exact opposite of this. If there’s an easy solution in PHP I would more than welcome the help! Thanks for reading!!

Answer 1

Found a possible solution, see this: How can I output a UTF-8 CSV in PHP that Excel will read properly?