PHP decoding and encoding json with unicode characters

Question

I have some json I need to decode  alter and then encode without messing up any characters   If I have a unicode character in a json string it will not decode  I m not sure why since json org says a string can contain  any-Unicode-character-    except- -or- -or-    control-character  But it doesn t work in python either     Tag   Od  metro     I can use utf8 encode which will allow the string to be decoded with json decode  however the character gets mangled into something else  This is the result from a print r of the result array  Two characters    Tag    gt  Od    metro   When I encode the array again I the character escaped to ascii  which is correct according to the json spec    Tag   gt  Od u00f3metro    Is there some way I can un-escape this  json encode gives no such option  utf8 encode does not seem to work either   Edit I see there is an unescaped unicode option for json encode  However it s not working as expected  Oh damn  it s only on php 5 4  I will have to use some regex as I only have 5 3    json   json encode  array  JSON UNESCAPED UNICODE   Warning  json encode   expects parameter 2 to be long  string

User · Answer

I have found following way to fix this issue    I hope this can help you   json encode  data JSON UNESCAPED UNICODE JSON UNESCAPED SLASHES

User · Answer

To encode an array that contains special characters  ISO 8859-1 to UTF8   If utf8 encode  amp  utf8 decode is not what is working for you  this might be an option   Everything that is in ISO-8859-1 should be converted to UTF8    utf8   utf8 encode                       contains UTF8  amp  ISO 8859-1 characters       iso88591   mb convert encoding  utf8   ISO-8859-1    UTF-8     data    iso88591    Encode should work after this     encoded data   json encode  data     Convert UTF-8 to  amp  from ISO 8859-1

User · Answer

json   array  tag    gt   Od  metro       Original array  json   json encode  json        Tag   Od u00f3metro    json   json decode  json      Od u00f3metro becomes  Od    metro echo  json- gt   tag       Od    metro echo utf8 decode  json- gt   tag        Od  metro   You were close  just use utf8 decode

User · Answer

A hacky way of doing JSON UNESCAPED UNICODE in PHP 5 3  Really disappointed by PHP json support  Maybe this will help someone else    array   some json       Encode all string children in the array to html entities  array walk recursive  array  function  amp  item   key        if is string  item              item   htmlentities  item              json   json encode  array       Decode the html entities and end up with unicode again   json   html entity decode  rson

User · Answer

JSON UNESCAPED UNICODE was added in PHP 5 4 so it looks like you need upgrade your version of PHP to take advantage of it  5 4 is not released yet though      There is a 5 4 alpha release candidate on QA though if you want to play on your development machine

User · Answer

Try Using   utf8 decode   and utf8 encode

User · Answer

try setting the utf-8 encoding in your page   header  content-type text html charset utf-8      this works for me    arr   array  tag    gt   Od  metro     encoded   json encode  arr    decoded   json decode  encoded   echo  decoded- gt   tag

User · Answer

Judging from everything you ve said  it seems like the original Od  metro string you re dealing with is encoded with ISO 8859-1  not UTF-8   Here s why I think so    json encode produced parseable output after you ran the input string through utf8 encode  which converts from ISO 8859-1 to UTF-8  You did say that you got  mangled  output when using print r after doing utf8 encode  but the mangled output you got is actually exactly what would happen by trying to parse UTF-8 text as ISO 8859-1     is  x63 xb3 in UTF-8  but that sequence is      in ISO 8859-1  Your htmlentities hackaround solution worked  htmlentities needs to know what the encoding of the input string to work correctly  If you don t specify one  it assumes ISO 8859-1   html entity decode  confusingly  defaults to UTF-8  so your method had the effect of converting from ISO 8859-1 to UTF-8   You said you had the same problem in Python  which would seem to exclude PHP from being the issue    PHP will use the  uXXXX escaping  but as you noted  this is valid JSON   So  it seems like you need to configure your connection to Postgres so that it will give you UTF-8 strings  The PHP manual indicates you d do this by appending options  --client encoding UTF8  to the connection string  There s also the possibility that the data currently stored in the database is in the wrong encoding   You could simply use utf8 encode  but this will only support characters that are part of ISO 8859-1    Finally  as another answer noted  you do need to make sure that you re declaring the proper charset  with an HTTP header or otherwise  of course  this particular issue might have just been an artifact of the environment where you did your print r testing

[php] PHP decoding and encoding json with unicode characters

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