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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-12T14:41:00+00:00

Im trying to get a some data from the db , but the output

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Im trying to get a some data from the db , but the output isn’t what i expected.
Doing my own querying on the db , i get this output : string 'C�te d�Ivoire' (length=13)

Querying the db from phpmyadmin i get normal output : Côte d’Ivoire

php.ini default charset, mysql db default charset , <meta> charset are all set to utf-8 .

I can’t fugire it out where the encoding is being made that i get different output with same configuration .

P.S. : using mysqli driver .

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    In the same page that gives you wrong results, try first running this instruction

    print base64_encode("Côte");

    The correct answer is Q8O0dGU.... If you get something else, like Q/R0ZQo..., this means that your script is working with another charset (here Latin-1) instead of UTF-8. It’s still possible that also MySQL and also the browser are playing tricks, but the line above ensures that PHP and/or your editor are playing you false.

    Next, extract Côte from the database and output its base64_encode. If you see Q8O0..., then the connection between MySQL and PHP is safely UTF8. If not, then whatever else might also be needed, you need to change the MySQL charset (SET NAMES utf8 and/or ALTER of table and database collation).

    If PHP is UTF8, and MySQL is UTF8, and still you see invalid characters, then it’s something between PHP and the browser. Verify that the content type header is sent correctly; if not, try sending it yourself as first thing in the script:

    Header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF8');

    For example in Apache configuration you should have

    AddDefaultCharset utf-8

    Verify also that your browser is not set to override both server charset and auto-detection.

    NOTE: as a rule of thumb, if you get a single diamond with a question mark instead of a UTF8 international character, this means that an UTF8 reader received an invalid UTF8 code point. In other words, the entity showing the diamond (your browser) is expecting UTF8, but is receiving something else, for example Latin1 a.k.a. ISO-8859-15.

    Another difficult-to-track way of getting that error is if the output somehow contains a byte order mark (BOM). This may happen if you create a file such as

    ###<?php
    Header("Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF8");
?>
<html>
     <head>
         <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF8" />
     </head>
     <body>
         Hellò, world!
     </body>
</html>

    where that ### is an (invisible in most editors) UTF8 BOM. To remove it, you either need to save the file as “without BOM” if the editor allows it, or use a different editor.

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