In addition to the php and mySQL documentation, is there any place else to learn more about dealing with encoding? Here's what I think I know, tell me if I'm wrong: * I have to deal with encoding (when the defaults don't work) for php, mySQL and MW (when it passes parameters through extensions, and subsequently final HTML display. * mySQL can have its encoding changed at the levels of database, table and column, all of which have defaults * on a hosted situation where I don't control the mySQL as a root admin, I need to use the ALTER sql commands to change the encoding * you can tell mySQL what encodings the php will send and receive. I'm still wrestling with using values passed from MW extensions in php controlled mySQL queries. These values have diacritcals, and the data in the mySQL tables have the same characters, but the MW encoding appears to be UTF-8. I've tried changing the encoding of the value in php using mb_convert_encoding(), but it stays UTF-8. I use phpMyAdmin and if I set it to use Latin-1/ISO-8859-1, it runs the queries correctly, but if I set it to Unicode/UTF-8 then it doesn't. My host has me on: PHP 4.3.10 / mySQL 4.0.22 Does my version of mySQL just not support Unicode/UTF-8? Even so, I would think that I should be able to re-encode the variable values to Latin1. Am I using the wrong function or syntax? mb_convert_encoding($theTown, "ISO-8859-1"); echo mb_detect_encoding($theTown); (outputs "UTF-8") I tried this: iconv_set_encoding("internal_encoding", "UTF-8"); iconv_set_encoding("output_encoding", "ISO-8859-1"); var_dump(iconv_get_encoding('all')); and get Fatal error: Call to undefined function: iconv_set_encoding() in .... on line .... here are some phpInfo values from my installation: Directive Local Value Master Value mbstring.detect_order no value no value mbstring.encoding_translation Off Off mbstring.func_overload 0 0 mbstring.http_input pass pass mbstring.http_output pass pass mbstring.internal_encoding ISO-8859-1 no value mbstring.language neutral neutral mbstring.substitute_character no value no value and I've tried this with no desired effect: $dbh=mysql_connect ($host, $username, $password) or die ('Connect error: ' . mysql_error()); mysql_select_db ($database) or die ('Cannot select database'); mysql_query("SET NAMES 'utf8'", $dbh); but this is probably because my mySQL version doesn't support utf-8? In summary, I think my php version should support converting encodings, but so far the only way the I've been able to do it is to manually detect a specific word and re-assing the same value in code like this: if (ereg("Gr.+tz", $theKreis)) { $theKreis = 'Grätz'; } Unfortunately, I'm at the point where I have hundreds of values that use special characters, instead of just a few.

Well, I just tried: mb_convert_encoding($theTown, "ISO-8859-1", "UTF-8"); echo mb_detect_encoding($theTown); and $newStr = utf8_decode($theTown) ; echo mb_detect_encoding($newStr); but I still get "UTF-8" echo'ed... did I do it wrong? Alternatatively, anyone got a clever regex syntax to make this approach more general? if (ereg("Schneidem.+hl", $theTown)) { $theTown = 'Schneidemühl'; } I may be chasing the wrong squirrel, because the above routine works and makes the mySQL query work, but when I place the same echo debug, I still get "UTF-8" echoed.... ????

At 03:45 PM 3/20/05, you wrote: I tried it this way: $newStr = mb_convert_encoding($theTown, "ISO-8859-1", "UTF-8"); echo mb_detect_encoding($newStr); Stills echoes ast UTF-8. The manual only shows one parameter, but I tried it anyway and got a "too many parmeters" error. (sigh) Really think I'm barking up the wrong overgrown bush...