[SOLVED] Reading speical characters from MySQL DB.

[iPixel]

So i've got these Geniuses that instead of entering let's say ® into the database they paste from word like so ®.  But when i pull that specific into from the table it returns as a weird looking [] thing. Is it possible with php to get it to read the database table with the ®'s inside it?

[fooDigi]

i put together this function to replace word characters with their html entity equivalent, respectively... you can add more chr()'s and their replacements if you know the character codes... this will replace some of msword's characters, i added 174 which i think is the registered trademark, might want to double check...

 

function replace_word($str)
{
   $return = '';
   $search = array(chr(145),chr(146),chr(147),chr(148),chr(150),chr(151),chr(174));
   $replace = array("'","'",'"','"','–','–','®');

   $return = str_replace($search,$replace,$str);
   return $return;
}

[taquitosensei]

microsoft word uses UTF-8 

you'll have to add this at the top of your page

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

 

[iPixel]

The UTF-8 code didnt work, i'll try the function and see how it goes.

 

Thanks

[fooDigi]

i think my function is flawed... sorry... this may work better though and is more simple...

 

echo htmlentities(utf8_decode($str));

[fooDigi]

ahh, now it works. i modified my function with some help of some code i found and modified...

 

<?
function replace_word($str)
{
$return = '';
$final = '';
$search = array(chr(145),chr(146),chr(147),chr(148),chr(150),chr(151),chr(169),chr(174));
$replace = array("'","'",'"','"','–','–','©','®');
$return = str_replace($search,$replace,$str);

$ret_array = preg_split('//', $return);
foreach ($ret_array as $val) {
   if (ord($val) < 128) $final .= $val;
}
return $final;
}

echo replace_word("© copyright and ® registered");
?>

[iPixel]

This function worked awesome Thanks!

 

PS: using that UTF-8 line makes the page go BOOOM on mac's via safari / ff.