Question

I’m writing a web app using php.
The main file (index.php) has some Hebrew chars in it and when I load it they show as “?”.
The encoding for the PHP and the HTML files is UTF-8.
When I change the index.php extension to HTML, the Hebrew chars are shown well.
I tried to put this line in the code:

<?php 
header('Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8')
?>

but it didn’t help.

I still want to use the file as PHP. How can I make the Hebrew chars to show?

Answer 1

Things to step through:

1. Make sure the file is correctly encoded (eg with isutf8 or similar).
2. Where is the text coming from? If it from a database, is the text stored as UTF-8? Is the connection to the database set as UTF-8 before any queries are made?
3. Make sure the header is being correctly sent (using Firebug, or Chrome developer tools, or Opera Dragonfly)
4. Check for a charset meta element in the head. (All of these should be set to UTF-8)
5. Make sure the browser is working properly (right-click on page, ‘Page info’, or similar in most browsers)

Ask if you need help with any of those.