Not sure where the problem lies - UK Web Hosting | Dedicated Server Windows and Linux VPS Forum

**borninblood** · #1 (**permalink**) 17-12-2007, 16:57

Hey all,

I have a rather odd problem, and I am not 100% where it lies, but I assume it is either in my PHP or MySQL.

Basically any accented characters, and even most apostrophes that have been taken from a database table will appear on screen as question marks (?)

If I look at things in phpMyAdmin they look fine and I am just using a normal echo statement to output everything (something with nl2br thrown in as well).

Any ideas?

It started happening when I took a complete copy of one database and started running the web site hosting off it instead of the old one, but when I look at things like character encoding they are all identical.

**WelshTom** · #2 (**permalink**) 17-12-2007, 17:12

Hello

Please see http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_entities.asp

**borninblood** · #3 (**permalink**) 17-12-2007, 17:17

Hey Thomas,

Cheers, but surely there is another option, because that would mean that everytime someone posts ¥ - there needs to be an algorithm that translates the unicode into the entity number?

I mean it used to work fine with any characters, it is only recently that it is displaying them as "?" in all cases.

**WelshTom** · #4 (**permalink**) 17-12-2007, 17:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by borninblood

Hey Thomas,

Cheers, but surely there is another option, because that would mean that everytime someone posts ¥ - there needs to be an algorithm that translates the unicode into the entity number?

I mean it used to work fine with any characters, it is only recently that it is displaying them as "?" in all cases.

Not really, even if it was working previously, you'll find it wouldn't have worked on some computers or web browsers, and that the entity needs to be used instead - using entities has been the acceptable way of displaying symbols for quite a long time. Simply copying symbols is very unlikely to work.

**borninblood** · #5 (**permalink**) 17-12-2007, 17:24

Hmm, I suppose so!

Next question then - is there a php function that will change any character into the correct entity code, so that when I use my input form, any special characters will be changed automatically?

Cheers in advance!

**WelshTom** · #6 (**permalink**) 17-12-2007, 18:33

I'm not sure to be honest, but I can suggest a very good editor which will do just that.

http://www.fckeditor.net/ is very flexible, and is easily integrated with other software.

Hope this helps...

**mephisto** · #7 (**permalink**) 18-12-2007, 10:58

You should have a look at PHP's multi byte string support. http://uk.php.net/mbstring

They may be able to help you

**borninblood** · #8 (**permalink**) 19-12-2007, 07:51

Cheers both of you!