Question

Is there any way to do that with PHP?

The data to be inserted looks fine when I print it out.

But when I insert it in the database the field becomes empty.

Answer 1

$tmp = iconv('YOUR CURRENT CHARSET', 'UTF-8', $string);

or

$tmp = utf8_encode($string);

Strange thing is you end up with an empty string in your DB. I can understand you’ll end up with some garbarge in your DB but nothing at all (empty string) is strange.

I just typed this in my console:

iconv -l | grep -i ansi

It showed me:

ANSI_X3.4-1968
ANSI_X3.4-1986
ANSI_X3.4
ANSI_X3.110-1983
ANSI_X3.110
MS-ANSI

These are possible values for YOUR CURRENT CHARSET
As pointed out before when your input string contains chars that are allowed in UTF, you dont need to convert anything.

Change UTF-8 in UTF-8//TRANSLIT when you dont want to omit chars but replace them with a look-a-like (when they are not in the UTF-8 set)