Question

i have the following bit of code:

function appear($data)
{
    $output = '';
    $unsee = unserialize ( $data );
    if (is_array ( $nsee ))
    {
        $output .= '<table>' . "";
        foreach ( $nsee as $button )
        {
            $output .= loadbutton ( $button);
        }
        $output .= '
        <tr><td>IP</td>
        <td>' . $_SERVER ['REMOTE_ADDR'] . '</td></tr>' . "";
        $output .= '</table>' . "";
    }
    return $output;
}

function loadbutton($button)
{
    $output = '';
    $output .= '<tr>' . "";
    $output .= '<td>';
    $output .= $button ['values'];
    $output .= '</td><td>';
    $output .= $_POST [strtolower ( $button ['values'])] ;
    $output .= '</td>' . "";
    $output .= '</tr>' . "";
    return $output;
}

when i use the appear function for the english serialized data, it works perfectly and outputs fine.

But when i use it for the arabic serilaized data. everything works except the arabic letters appear as “????” and not as actual arabic letters.

I have verified the data in the database, everything is UTF-8, and everything is valid db wise and saving serilaized wise. but the output and unserialization is incorrect.

Do you know a way to fix this?
Does unserialization support arabic letters? if not then why does it save arabic letters correctly but not fetches them?

EDIT:

The problem i believe is in the call $button [‘values’].

my $button array is
array ( 'values' => 'Field Value')

no solution comes to mind. i know it should work.

SOLUTION:

The problem was in my mysql insert statement of the serialized data. i was inserting in latin. a simple, idiotic mistake.

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

Make sure you have set in your HTML document:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>

or have it set using an HTTP header by placing this at the TOP of your PHP code BEFORE any content is output:

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

The browser is not using the correct character set, and is thus displaying ? in place of those characters.

Also use:

$output .= $_POST[mb_strtolower($button['values'], 'UTF-8')];

As strtolower() will not properly lowercase multi-byte chars.