[php] PHP decoding and encoding json with unicode characters

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":"Odómetro"}

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] => Odómetro

When I encode the array again I the character escaped to ascii, which is correct according to the json spec:

"Tag"=>"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 ...

I have found following way to fix this issue... I hope this can help you.

json_encode($data,JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE|JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES);

$json = array('tag' => 'Odómetro'); // Original array
$json = json_encode($json); // {"Tag":"Od\u00f3metro"}
$json = json_decode($json); // Od\u00f3metro becomes  Odómetro
echo $json->{'tag'}; // Odómetro
echo utf8_decode($json->{'tag'}); // Odómetro

You were close, just use utf8_decode.

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.

try setting the utf-8 encoding in your page:

header('content-type:text/html;charset=utf-8');

this works for me:

$arr = array('tag' => 'Odómetro');
$encoded = json_encode($arr);
$decoded = json_decode($encoded);
echo $decoded->{'tag'};

Try Using:

utf8_decode() and utf8_encode

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(&$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);

To encode an array that contains special characters, ISO 8859-1 to UTF8. (If utf8_encode & 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 & 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 & from ISO 8859-1