Convert "Java source code characters" in JSON string using PHP

Question

I have a JSON string that contains Dal\u00e9. When I use json_decode on the JSON, it is converted to DalÃ©, however the original string that the JSON is from is Dalé. Why is this not converted properly?

I have found that "\u00E9" is the C/C++/Java source code encoding for é. However, to me this doesn't answer why this is going wrong.

Example of incorrect PHP output:

<?php
$opts = array('http'=>array('ignore_errors' => true));
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
$jsonurl = "http://api.kivaws.org/v1/loans/552804.json";
$json = file_get_contents($jsonurl, false, $context);
$json_output = array(json_decode($json));
$json_error = $json_output[0]->error;
$json_message = $json_error->message;

foreach ($json_output[0]->{'loans'} as $loan) {
echo 'Name: '.$loan->{'name'};
}
?>

php handles unicode escape sequences in json perfectly fine. Likely, you have borked the string somewhere else, or you haven't told the web browser that you're giving it utf8. — goat
– goat, Commented Jun 24, 2013 at 4:58

goat · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-24 05:16:21Z

3

You need to tell the web browser what encoding you are giving it.

<?php
header('content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8');
var_dump(json_decode($jsonStr));

answered Jun 24, 2013 at 5:16

goat

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6 Comments

michaellindahl Over a year ago

Note: for my case (having this inside a webpage) I will be using header('content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

zerkms Over a year ago

@michaellindahl: your comments are confusing ;-)

michaellindahl Over a year ago

@zerkms they make complete sense to me :P apparently I wasn't setting the charset and relying on the default which was wrong. I didn't understand this needed to be set in the PHP header, which I've never had to do before.

michaellindahl Over a year ago

Any reason why this needs to be done? Should I be setting the header in the PHP for every webpage or just in certain circumstances?

goat Over a year ago

@michaellindahl otherwise, a browser has to guess. And, there's many situations where it's not possible to guarantee a correct guess, which leads to erratic and baffling bugs throughout your software. A robust piece of web software always specifies the encoding, for every page, every time.

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Rajeev Ranjan · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-24 06:41:25Z

1

if you are using php 5.4 you may use the function options of json_encode() like this :-

echo $b=json_encode('Dalé',JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);
echo json_decode($b);

edited Jun 24, 2013 at 6:41

answered Jun 24, 2013 at 5:16

Rajeev Ranjan

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