Character Set inside a PHP class?

[drewjoh]

I've been programming for a while... and it's been a long road to understanding and getting all the character sets correct for, well, everything.

 

We have lots of international customers, and I quickly found that having MySQL = latin_1, HTML = 8859-1, and our credit processor = UTF-8... doesn't work very consistently. So going forward... I'm using MySQL = UTF-8_general, the MySQL connection = UTF-8_general... HTML = utf-8... and it's all working fine and good... until just now. This is what I'm finding....

 

This is my test string that I'm using: Bièr hjärt Roló 202 3º 1ª

 

Creating a variable and echoing this in PHP works. Example:

 

$var = 'Bièr hjärt Roló 202 3º 1ª';
echo $var;

 

Creating a class with an empty variable, filling it, and echoing it works: Example:

 

class Test {
public $var;

__construct($input)
{
$this->var = $input;
}
}

$test = new Test('Bièr hjärt Roló 202 3º 1ª');
echo $test->var;

 

However, creating a class with a pre-defined variable, and outputting it... doesn't. Example:

 

class Test {
public $var = 'Bièr hjärt Roló 202 3º 1ª';

__construct()
{ }
}

$test = new Test();
echo $test->var;

 

I have searched high and low and can't figure this out for the life of me. Can anyone explain this? Or confirm/debunk my results?

 

In the last example that doesn't work. I can say this:

 

echo utf8_encode($test->var);

 

And it works ok, but this doesn't explain why it does this, and is not really an acceptable solution. Seeing how pre-defined variables need to be encoded (shouldn't they be already?), but class variables set from outside don't.

 

Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this!

 

Other information: using phpinfo();...

- My "default_charset" in the php config is set to "no value". My character set for the HTML page is set to utf-8 and that's the type the page is using to render text.

- Using a similar class, if I set a variable in the class and it then saves it to my database, and then retrieves it and outputs it... works correctly also. So it seems to only happen with a variable that's predefined in a class.

[jd2007]

add word function to __construct, like this:

 

class Test {
public $var = 'Bièr hjärt Roló 202 3º 1ª';
// here
function __construct()
{ }
}

$test = new Test();
echo $test->var;

 

it works fine !

[drewjoh]

Thanks for your reply JD2007! When I saw your post I was like "oh, duh!" and went to do that, but... "function" was there, I just didn't include it when typing it out here in the forum.

 

So... no go,  ??? I must be doing something wrong... or something. Especially if this works for you... then I don't know what to think!

 

I tried it some more, and this is what happens with two examples:

- The first example of the test string is when saying "echo $test->var" when the variable was set in the class definition.

- The second example of the test string is when setting the $var after initiating an instance of the class, and then outputting it.

 

In Firefox, when I view source (Firefox source browser), I get:

Bi?r hj?rt Rol? 202 3? 1? - Bièr hjärt Roló 202 3º 1ª

 

And in IE, when I view source (in notepad), I get:

Bièr hjärt Roló 202 3º 1ª - Bièr hjärt Roló 202 3º 1ª

 

Firefox displays in the browser just what you see in source. IE displays "Bi�r hj�rt Rol� 202 3� 1� - Bièr hjärt Roló 202 3º 1ª" in the browser.

 

I still don't get it! An hour or so more of searching and googling hasn't provided anything new. But at least I've figured out my limitations...